Court Opinion

ID: 9571588
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:32:59.96569+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:30:39.818890
License: Public Domain

Mills, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I would adopt entirely the analysis and opinion of Judge Carley wherein the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court in Burgess v. Meinken, 204 Ga. App. 600 (420 SE2d 329) (1992).
The undisputed pertinent facts are that the appellant was arrested, indicted and was acquitted. The records sought by appellant to be expunged did not reflect the acquittal.
In a de novo hearing under OCGA § 35-3-37 (c), the trial judge *869found “the arrest record is inaccurate and misleading in that it does not reflect the disposition of this case.” The trial court ordered the record to be expunged.
Expungement, in some cases, may be an appropriate remedy where the record is indeed “inaccurate”; however in this case there is no evidence of incorrect name, incorrect charge, nor any other erroneous data contained in appellant’s record. The only evidence, indeed the trial court’s very finding, reveals that appellant’s record merely fails to “reflect the disposition” of the case. This is not an “inaccurate” record but rather an “incomplete” record for which the appropriate remedy would be supplementation.3 To hold otherwise would render meaningless the word “incomplete” in OCGA § 35-3-37.4
Even where a record is erroneous and therefore “inaccurate” in some respects, e.g., wrong birth date, inappropriate alias, or wrong name because of use of a borrowed I.D., the appropriate remedy often would not be expungement, but rather modification.
Clearly the discretion of the trial court in such issues is not, nor should it be, unbridled. The General Assembly has given adequate guidelines within which to gauge where discretion has been abused by specifying that the court “may order such relief as it finds to be required by law,” and by requiring “inaccurate, incomplete or misleading . . .” records to be “appropriately expunged, modified, or supplemented by an explanatory notation.” (Emphasis supplied.) OCGA § 35-3-37 (c).
Otherwise the possibilities are endless. If expungement is appropriate for the “inaccuracy” of omitting an acquittal by operation of law, it might equally be “appropriate” for jury trial acquittals or even First Offender “acquittals.”
In State of Ga. v. C. S. B., 250 Ga. 261 (297 SE2d 260) (1982), the trial judge who had ordered expungement of that appellant’s First Offender records was reversed by unanimous decision of this court. The reversal was for, among other reasons, the very practical one that to do so would render unenforceable the First Offender Act prohibition on availing oneself of First Offender treatment more than once. Code *870Ann. § 27-2727, subsequently amended and now OCGA § 42-8-60 (b). Clearly, First Offender “acquittals” may not be expunged.
If expungement is “appropriate” for acquittals, then why not for dismissed warrants or nolle prossed5 indictments by reason of innocence? Indeed, why not those dismissed or nolle prossed or dead docketed because of a deal to implicate another defendant?
And if appellant’s records are expunged, why not those of everyone whose case has resulted in an acquittal of any kind, or a dismissed warrant, a nolle prossed or dead docketed indictment? Surely the parameters of discretion if they be so broad when viewed with “equal protection” would not allow a judge to expunge for some and not for others, equally deserving.
The Majority recognizes this problem and seeks to solve it by creation of a balancing test in Division 2. The Majority suggests
a superior court should balance the competing interests involved, namely those of the state in maintaining extensive arrest records to aid in effective law enforcement and those of the individual in being free from the harm that may be caused from the existence of those records. . . .
Id. at p. 866. Unfortunately, such a test is entirely generic and offers very little help in gauging individual cases.
The interest of the state in maintaining records is statutory. It relates not only to effective law enforcement, but also, among other things, to investigatory decisions in adoptions under OCGA § 19-8-16 (a) and licensing and hiring investigations and decisions in the day care and youth supervision fields. OCGA § 49-5-60 et seq. and § 49-5-110 et seq. Surely decisions to hire, fire, license and prosecute should not be made on the basis of a mere arrest record. But a decision to make a follow up investigation based on an arrest record can be vital, which the General Assembly has recognized. The state’s interest should not vary by the person nor by the seriousness of the offense, except as fixed by statute.
The interests of an arrested person will also be relatively the same; that is that all arrested persons would naturally prefer ex-pungement as such records, whether one is innocent or guilty, are undesirable and may cause harm. Nevertheless, they are not public records, and their use is strictly regulated. OCGA §§ 35-3-8; 31-7-260. It is difficult to see wherein these interests will vary on either side of the equation so as to enable the balancing function.
Having recognized that expungement is appropriate only in “exceptional cases” the majority now would remand for a further finding *871of fact within parameters that are difficult to ascertain. There appears to be a suggestion that “concern” about a suggestive or leading police procedure on a videotape might be sufficient to warrant expungement. This would hardly be an exceptional case in that concern about leading must be a problem in many cases with child witnesses. More importantly, inevitably there must be some weakness worthy of concern in almost every criminal case that does not lead to conviction. This would further establish a standard so easy to meet as to encourage such a motion in almost any case wherein a conviction is not obtained and the interested party has the means with which to file such an action. It would appear that we are encouraging “mini-trials” of cases already abandoned by the prosecution where the interests of the arrested persons may be great and well represented, and where that of the agencies, and therefore those of the state, may not be presented at all.
All of this is overly academic and unnecessary. The emphasis in interpreting the statute should be on the word “appropriate.” I do not necessarily dissent from Division 1 of the majority opinion but merely find it difficult to imagine a set of circumstances wherein expungement would be the appropriate remedy for “incompleteness” and find such an exercise in unlikely hypotheticals to be unnecessary because I would affirm without reaching that issue. The decision of the trial judge that the record was “inaccurate” is not supported by the evidence nor the trial judge’s finding of fact. Furthermore the decision that expungement was an “appropriate” remedy is clearly erroneous where the record can so readily and demonstrably be rendered accurate, complete and not misleading by merely directing that the record reflect the acquittal.
If we are committed to such an interpretation, however, the standard should be ascertainable. I would suggest that it be “circumstances under which the court finds that the remedy of modification or supplementation would still leave the record ‘inaccurate or misleading.’ ” This would seem to be more in keeping with the language of Division 2 wherein the majority finds that
expungement is the most drastic of the three available remedies . . . appropriate . . . only in the exceptional cases in which the remedies of modification or supplementation are inadequate to protect the interest of the individual.
As it is, we are creating a precedent which may cause the GCIC crime reporting system to be less than uniform contrary to OCGA § 35-3-33 (3). The system may be expunged so that it includes little more than records of those who have been convicted, those who have been acquitted as First Offenders (see State of Ga. v. C. S. B., supra) and *872indigents.
Decided March 15, 1993.
Glenn Zell, Rodney Zell, for appellant.
Robert E. Wilson, District Attorney, Barbara B. Conroy, J. Thomas Morgan III, Assistant District Attorneys, for appellees.

 The term “inaccurate” appears to be one of common parlance having no separate legal definition. The negative “inaccurate” is defined in terms of the positive “accurate” which means generally “free from error . . . free of defect. . . conforming exactly to the truth to a standard . . . consistent with a standard rule or model . . . precise . . . exact.” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary; and The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, 2nd ed. While arguably “inaccurate” could include “incomplete,” it should not be so construed where the word “incomplete” also appears in the same clause of the same statute.

 OCGA § 35-3-37 (c);
The court shall conduct a de novo hearing and may order such relief as it finds to be required by law. . . . Should the record in question be found to be inaccurate, incomplete, or misleading, the court shall order it to be appropriately expunged, modified, or supplemented by an explanatory notation. (Emphasis supplied.)

 But see Drake v. State, 170 Ga. App. 846 (318 SE2d 721) (1984).