MARVIN MANDEL, Governor                       3093

May 29, 1974.

The Honorable Marvin Mandel
Governor of Maryland
State House
Annapolis, Maryland 21404

Dear Governor:

I am writing to you concerning the provisions of
House Bill 122 which provides for expungement of criminal
records in certain cases.

It is difficult to quarrel with the concept that
certain records of arrest and trials should be expunged,
for it is true that many arrests are made each year for
which there is no valid basis and the record of that
arrest could be embarrassing to the particular citizen.
Although I did not testify before any committee on this
bill, I have on occasion stated to individual legislators
my personal view that the judges of this State should be
vested with authority to order expungement when in their
judgment such action is required by the ends of justice.
I have also repeatedly expressed the view that
expungement should not apply to motor vehicle cases, and
should be upon written petition filed with the court.

Because I support the principle of expungement and
because of my very real respect for the sponsors of this
measure, it is with reluctance that I suggest to you that
this bill in its present form might impose virtually
insurmountable problems on the judges and clerical staff
of the District Court.

I am troubled by several aspects of the bill. The
first of them is that the definition section, 727B, would
seem to include the electronic recording of a case within
those records that must be expunged. Throughout the
three year history of this court we have recorded all
trials on a disk—type recording device, and in tens of
thousands of instances many brief trials are recorded on
the same record. I do not know how we .can remove or
expunge one particular trial from such a disk. If it can
be done at all, it. will most certainly be a time
consuming and laborious practice, and we do not have
sufficient personnel to accomplish this task if we should
be faced with a large number of petitions.

My second specific problem arises from the
retroactivity section of the bill, Section 734. Under
the provisions of Article IV, Section 41I(f) of the
Constitution the District Court is the custodian of all
papers, dockets, files, books and records of all of our
predecessor courts of this State, including every trial
magistrate, all People's Courts and the Municipal Court