Lawmakers have now ended their three-month special session. And, they left one important piece of business unfinished.
Earlier this year, House Democrats and Senate Democrats could not agree on how old convictions should be expunged from criminal records. House Democrats were pushing an automatic model where misdemeanors and even some felonies would go away after eight years. But Senate Democrats insisted on a petition process.
Jenn Michelle Pedini at the marijuana advocacy group NORML says the Senate approach benefits a powerful lobby: lawyers.
"Not only are they a powerful lobby, these attorneys, they're members of the legislature and they're chairs of committees that hear these bills," she explains. "So there seems to be a conflict of interest potentially there, but if Virginians are going to keep electing these people to represent them, they're going to continue to get the same results."
Virginia legal expert Rich Kelsey says judges like to look at a defendant's history and make an individual determination.
"So there's a very good reason to have a petition process," Kelsey says. "But certainly it is 100% true that the petition process requiring you to hire a lawyer is expensive, and because it's expensive it would necessarily preclude many people from having the same access towards expungement."
The debate will likely happen again two months from now when the next General Assembly session begins in mid-January.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
