CORI RECORD SEALING and EXPUNGEMENT

Please note that Attorney Varszegi is currently not accepting any new cases.

In Massachusetts, a person's record of criminal court cases is called Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI). Every person has the right to request a copy of their CORI, which includes not only the person's criminal charges but also dispositions (whether a case was dismissed, resulted in an acquittal or conviction, etc.) and defaults (for instance, when a person didn't show up on a scheduled court date). Just reading and understanding CORI can seem like an arcane art, but knowing the codes used for CORI can help a good deal; see our free resources section for more information. Unfortunately, if you can see this information, so can many others. CORI can cause extreme difficulties in daily life, such as in finding a job or an apartment; the list of people allowed to see all or some subset of your CORI includes housing providers, potential employers, and police.

A good way to solve these problems is called CORI sealing. In this procedure, the applicant submits a request to seal records in each courthouse in which a conviction or other case disposition occurred. This request may need to be supplemented with documentation as to how the applicant's CORI is causing him or her difficulties in daily life. Although the exact procedure may differ depending on the courthouse and case, generally what happens next in a successful sealing is a hearing before a judge, followed by a mandatory thirty-day waiting period during which the sealing request is posted for public review at the courthouse, followed by a second and final public hearing. A good CORI lawyer can be helpful during this process.

The DA's office may attempt to contact the victim, if applicable, who may then appear at the hearing to contest the sealing of the records. Some DAs will also oppose sealing on general grounds, arguing that the public has a need to know about even old or dismissed cases. Of course, the reality is that CORI can have a devastating, lasting effect, akin to extra punishment, on the life of the person with the record, which far outweighs any possible good that leaving the CORI unsealed would have.

The process of sealing records is called "expungement" in many states, and there is a separate procedure called expungement in Massachusetts, but it is actually different from record sealing. In Massachusetts, this separate expungement procedure is intended for use when a case has essentially resulted in a "fraud upon the court" (a good example of this is when a victim of identity theft gets a conviction on his CORI record, based on a crime committed by the identity thief). If you think you might be a candidate for expungement, please contact the office for a free consultation with an expungement lawyer.

Record sealing and expungement may be more important than ever, due to recent changes in the law on access to unsealed criminal records. In mid-2010, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick signed into law a CORI reform bill, which had a number of far-reaching effects on the way CORI records are sealed and disseminated. Under the new law, for example, housing providers can more easily gain access to CORI information on a tenant applying for occupancy. Luckily, the changes in the law are not all bad. For example, under the new rules, defendants avoiding a conviction in a criminal case by an alternative disposition, such as pretrial probation, will in the future be able to get the record of the court case sealed more easily upon successful completion of the case requirements.

Please note that Attorney Varszegi is currently not accepting any new cases.