by Kathy Para
JBA Pro Bono Committee Chair
Sometimes you just can’t take “no” for an answer. And sometimes you can’t take several “nos,” either. If attorney Caroline Kingston didn’t quite believe that before her recent pro bono seal/expunge case, she definitely believes it now.
“This has been one of the most fulfilling cases I have ever handled,” said Kingston, “because at the beginning, when I looked at the file, it seemed like an impossible request where the client had already received a ‘no’ at every turn.”
The female client, whose case was taken on by Jacksonville Area Legal Aid, had a simple battery conviction on her record, and even 10 years after the fact, this mark was making life difficult for her.
“She wanted to seal her conviction so that she could continue to move on from this incident 10 years earlier and have fewer doors shut regarding her career future and educational prospects,” Kingston said.
So, despite the numerous failures the client had already suffered in this quest, the former assistant state attorney went to work.
The roadblock, Kingston found, lay in the Federal Department of Law Enforcement. That agency’s policies make it difficult for domestic battery convictions to be sealed, and while Kingston’s client’s conviction was for simple battery, the victim, an adult male, was a relative.
The FDLE was treating the conviction as a domestic battery and continuing to deny the woman’s attempt to seal the record. “I bounced some ideas off of my expert resource, David Barksdale, who had recently conducted a CLE on seal/expunge for JALA,” Kingston said. “Then I prepared a pleading to have the appropriate judge reconsider FDLE’s ruling.” The State Attorney’s Office in that county supported Kingston’s efforts.
“My client had not pled to, nor did she voluntarily accept the consequences of, a conviction for domestic battery, so it wasn’t fair for her to be treated as if the conviction was, in fact, domestic battery.”
Kingston took her documentation and arguments back to FDLE. “The FDLE attorney finally agreed that it was unlikely that the agency would be successful if it came to a hearing on those facts in that venue, so they granted the Certificate of Eligibility to have the matter sealed.”
“We just kept making our arguments to the right people,” Kingston said. “Most everyone we dealt with was compassionate and fair. We just needed to have a plan of attack and be persistent about getting our information to the right people. Finally, we got the ‘yes’ that we needed.”
Kingston – who at the time practiced in the areas of worker’s compensation, personal injury and criminal defense at Eraclides, Johns, Hall, Gelman, Johannessen & Goodman LLP – said it was a special feeling to resolve this problem for her client. “It was so easy and incredibly rewarding to be passionate about this client and her case,” Kingston said. “It was very fulfilling to use my law degree and the skills that I have learned to make a difference in the life of someone who really needed an advocate.”
Kingston has recently accepted a position at Michigan State University College of Law, where she plans to encourage students to carve out time for pro bono legal work.
Ironically, Kingston wasn’t able to attend the seal/expunge CLE conducted by Barksdale for JALA pro bono attorneys. However, she was able to obtain much of the knowledge she needed for this case by reviewing the CLE DVD and course handouts available at the JALA offices.
“The resources were invaluable,” she said. “Not only did they walk me through the steps, the applicable law and the pitfalls, but they included template/model pleadings to use as a starting point.
“And David Barksdale made himself available to me as a sounding board throughout this case. Having him to check in with to make sure I was on the right track was invaluable. The first series of ‘nos’ might have been too intimidating to me if I hadn’t had him there to back me up,” she said.
For more information on the seal/expunge and other CLE resources for pro bono attorneys, contact Kathy Para, Pro Bono Development Coordinator, [email protected], 356-8371, ext. 363.