The following Report highlights some of the Committee’s
considerations that formed the basis for the new rule. As
such, this Report should not be confused with the official
Committee Comment which follows the new rule and which
is intended as an accompanying and permanent Comment to
it. It should also be noted that the Supreme Court adopted
the new rule only, and not the Committee’s Comment or the
content of this Report.
The complete text of the new rule immediately follows the
Court’s Order which precedes this Report.
This proposal was submitted to the Court for final action
without prepublication pursuant to Pa.R.J.A. 103(a)(3).
THE COURTS 1135
Background
In 1992, representatives of the State Police, the
Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, and
Committee Staff met to discuss the need for requiring the
use of a uniform form of expungement order. After
reviewing the issues raised in this discussion, the Criminal
Procedural Rules Committee recommended that the Court
adopt a rule requiring the minimum contents of an order for
expungement. This new rule is necessary to ensure that all
orders for expungement contain the information needed by
the State Police Central Repository and other criminal
justice agencies to promptly and accurately comply with the
expungement order and with the requirements of the
Criminal History Record Information Act (CHRIA).
Under present practice, the expungement orders vary
significantly from judicial district to judicial district and
from judge to judge. Furthermore, expungement orders are
frequently incomplete, especially as to the type of
identifying information included in the orders. These
variations make it difficult, if not impossible in some cases,
for the criminal justice agencies charged with the
responsibility for expunging records to expeditiously do so.
Discussion
Contents of Rule
The new rule is very general, and provides the mandatory
contents that must be included in every order for
expungement. The Committee agreed to make the new rule
a content rule only, so that the specific form of the order
could be determined by the individual judges or judicial
districts. The Comment explains that the list of required
contents is not intended to be exclusive. We did not want to
preclude judges from adding information which they
conclude is necessary for expungement matters in their
respective judicial districts or relative to a specific
defendant.
The mandated information includes:
(1) the identifiers which are uniformly used
statewide, including:
At this meeting, we discussed having the AOPC
design a form order that could be published with a
directive from the Court Administrator that it be
used in all cases in which expungement is
requested, but the consensus was that a Rule of
Criminal Procedure would result in the most
compliance.
(a) the defendant’s name, date of birth,
and social security number;
(b) the offense tracking number (OTN),
and
(c) the docket numbers;
(2) the information which is required by the
Criminal History Record Information Act, 18 Pa.
C.S.
§9122, including:
(a) the charges,
(b) the date of arrest,
(c) the disposition, and
(d) the reason for expungement; and
(3) a list of the criminal justice agencies upon
which certified copies of the order are to be served.
The Comment points out that a criminal justice agency, as
used in Rule 9017(9) includes police departments, county
detectives, and other law enforcement agencies.
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