I find these projects potentially dangerous and for people who have been arrested in a state where the case is dismissed but they cannot expunge because of the type of charge.
I was falsely arrested under the belief of arson. It happened when I was in my early 20s. The charges were dismissed and my expensive lawyer said it was the best deal to end it all. There wasn't even a fire and a cop that made the arrest had no reason to assume I was trying to start a fire. In any case, I still have to wait a few years to even expunge it.
Well, when going through university I was bullied & ostracized for a period of time and eventually found out someone had googled my name. They could see the arrest on some website and just the type of charge it was.
This sounds similar to the "right to be forgotten" concept in EU law where citizens can complain to Google to have their records removed from the search engine, but there is no way to delete all data about the incident.
I don't want to trivialize the pain a wrongful arrest ad bullying caused, but I think the solution to the underlying problem is more sunlight, not less. Without being able to see how many wrongful/unfruitful arrests happened at the hands of your arresting officer and DA, power might go unchecked for longer and grow more corrupt.
Oh my life was ruined at the time and I had to leave for another university. So I like to think you're not trivializing it. Happened in the USA and so no way to have the right to be forgotten. I ended up changing my name.
I'm sorry it happened to you and I'm frequently ashamed of our legal system. It's obviously not perfect, but sometimes it feel like the people who work in it don't have the capability to improve it.
I believe Reply All did a podcast on 'services' that essentially blackmail you by taking arrest records and placing them on the first page of google. So an arrest can become a black mark on your record. Or, you pay up. Pretty scummy stuff
Statutes of limitation makes suing the police officer impossible at this point.
Some context: I'm not from an upperclass family and me just paying for the lawyer to get the case dismissed really hurt financially. As well with the strain on my parents.
At the time of the event, lawyers told me it's very hard to make anything worth the effort & cost and unless clear video evidence exists of what happened. It would have been my testimony against the police officer. Police have good lawyers when they're being sued as well.
I was unsure about suing a website for libel. I did research the laws around it and services do exist to attempt at removing similar material online of what happened against me. I thought after finding out why I was bullied that it wasn't guaranteed and changing my name would likely be sufficient. At this point in my life I'm still not financially well off to care enough anymore. I work in academia and I moved outside of the USA after graduating.
I did learn a lot from what happened. It can really hurt to not be financially well off, the system really harms people even if they're innocent and not everyone has a happy story of lawyers lining up to take on injustice.
I was falsely arrested under the belief of arson. It happened when I was in my early 20s. The charges were dismissed and my expensive lawyer said it was the best deal to end it all. There wasn't even a fire and a cop that made the arrest had no reason to assume I was trying to start a fire. In any case, I still have to wait a few years to even expunge it.
Well, when going through university I was bullied & ostracized for a period of time and eventually found out someone had googled my name. They could see the arrest on some website and just the type of charge it was.