South Dakota Senate Majority Leader Gary Cammack's DUI Arrest Records "Sealed After Details Posted on Blog"

Rapid City Journal (Shannon Marvel) reports, as does the blog itself, Dakota Free Press, plus Kelo Land (Tom Hanson) (no, not that Kelo). From the Rapid City Journal:

[Pennington County State's Attorney Mark] Vargo spoke generally about a suspended imposition of a sentence for a misdemeanor charge, saying that a person who successfully completes a diversion program can have the case dismissed a year following the completion of the dismissal, then have the case sealed and expunged from their criminal record.

A court case may be sealed if the court is concerned that case records may lead to excessive pretrial publicity and jeopardize fairness for both the defendant and prosecution. Vargo said case files are frequently sealed in cases involving child victims or victims of a sexual offense.

According to the 1993 South Dakota Supreme Court decision, State v. Schempp, the purpose of suspended imposition of sentence is "to allow a first-time offender to rehabilitate himself without the trauma of imprisonment or the stigma of conviction record."

Comments

[Cal Cetín]

Sounds good to me. Especially if the offender agrees to rehabilitate himself and does the needed community service. Then unseal only if he does a second crime and they want to know if he qualifies for a first-offenders program.

[John F. Carr]

In the East it’s often illegal or not allowed by policy to plea bargain a DUI case down to a non-alcohol case or to make it vanish from a driver’s permanent record. Town courts in New York are happy to turn a speeding ticket into a parking ticket, but a DUI can only be pled down as far as a DWAI (“driving while ability impaired”, .05% BAC). If you take diversion in Massachusetts the non-criminal disposition still counts as a prior offense for essentially all purposes except the “have you been convicted of a crime” question. And even that last one might not be true in federal court, which considers some formally non-guilty dispositions to be substantively the same as a conviction.

But the rules are different for VIP’s, here and probably there as well.

[Dilan Esper]

In the East it’s often illegal or not allowed by policy to plea bargain a DUI case down to a non-alcohol case or to make it vanish from a driver’s permanent record.

Here in California, while not illegal, that is definitely policy at many prosecutors’ office. They will plead you down to “wet reckless” (i.e., reckless driving where alcohol was involved), which will get you a lighter sentence, but they won’t plead you to anything where the insurance companies aren’t informed that you were drinking and driving.