So Lisa Hansen takes her store’s night deposit and drops it off at the bank.
Bank claims she didn’t – they say she wasn’t on the security videos, and the bag wasn’t there. Her boss demands criminal charges. (By the way - we’re talking about $80 in cash).
She’s urged to plead guilty, but ultimately can’t admit to doing anything wrong. She’s convicted of theft and sentenced to 40 hours of community service.
A year later… the bank says ooops.
I think they should damn well “elaborate,” especially after their own security people claimed that the bank’s 15 surveillance cameras at that branch showed no one had stopped at the night depository at the time Hansen had said she was there, and that “it was unlikely anyone could have avoided detection.”
So what happens in a situation like this? Does her conviction automatically get strike, does she have to seek a pardon, or is she stuck with a criminal record?
This same thing happened to a co-worker of mine. It didn’t involve the bank-- it was the safe at work. He’d had a busy night, so he made a “drop” into the safe. (It was one of those kinds where you drop the deposit in a top slit and then turn the handle so that the drum rotates and drops the money inside.)
Well, the next morning, the manager couldn’t find it. He’d never liked my co-worker, so he told me he’d called the cops on “the little fag.” My co-worker says the cops came to his house and searched his room for the money, but of course, didn’t find anything. He called me at work, depsterate and scared, wanting to know what he should do. The manager had fired him for the “theft.”
I decided to look for it myself. I went over to the safe and turned the drum. Sure enough, there was the envelope-- it had become wedged on the side instead of dropping down into the safe. I was indignant-- all it would have taken was a thirty-second search of the safe itself and all of this commotion could have been avoided.
The manager called my co-worker after I told him I found the money and grudgingly told him he could have his job back. (No apology.) My co-worker decided not to accept that offer.
from the article, it sounded like she was sentenced under a special law in MI that allows for a “Youthful offender” to enter a diversion program, and upon sucessful completion, the conviction isn’t entered into the system (called, IIRC, the “Holmes Youthful Trainee Act”).
However, I would suggest to her (for Michigan) that she request that the case be expunged (vs. ‘set aside’), which would mean that the entire case record would be destroyed, her fingerprint card etc. She shouldn’t have any vestige of a criminal record from this case.
The big question that I have after reading that is, did the bank security people lie to the police? It doesn’t sound like the security video was used at trial and only that
Did the police take the bank security at their word? I can’t imagine that the police wouldn’t have looked at the video - or maybe they didn’t because it was only $80? The safe thing to say is that the ball was dropped but ‘justice’ finally won out.
The story in our paper a few weeks ago was that the deposit was found wedged in the side between the drop off drawer part and the wall. Someone finally took the thing apart after complaints that it wasn’t closing properly and getting stuck :rolleyes:
I wonder about the surveillance tape too - there must be a gap in the tape or else maybe it is a scanning camera and not fixed on the deposit box.
She said the bank has never officially apologized to her. In the story I read, she didn’t fail the polygraph, it was inconclusive but the testing official doubted her. It made it sound like he personally thought she was lying, but the test itself didn’t show it for certain.
What a horrible year this must have been for her, knowing that most people thought she was a thief, all for a stupid amount of money too.
And no matter what is finally done, anytime a cop runs her ID for a minor taffic stop, her arrest will pop up. That record never goes away. One of the nasty little things the folks who ‘work’ in they system fail to tell ya.
Been there, done that. The system is not about justice, it never was, it is about laws.
unless she does what I suggest and gets it expunged. The way it was explained to me by the folks at the Attorney General’s office, in the case of expungement (very rare, but this would seem to qualify), all records, including the fingerprint card are destroyed. Otherwise, yes, her record would be viewable to law enforcement agencies.
but in this case, it seems clear that no crime occurred. therefore no conviction should have.
Expungement is actually not all that rare. I’ve done several expungements for others and, any time there is an arrest, even if the charges are dropped, the record remains in the computer system. The process for getting one done is rather straightforward, but, as in any beaurocratic system, requires you to closely follow instructions and send multiple copies of forms to multiple places (for example, in Chicago you have to send the expungement form to Corporation Counsel, Cook County State’s Attorney, Chicago Police Department, and the Illinois State Police.)
After the process is complete (here it takes about 9 months) you get a copy of the judge’s signed order approving the expungment, your fingerprint cards, the negative to your mug shot, your court file, etc… back.
I also have a story my bank rep told me - once they got someone’s deposit stuck and found it 17 years later, when they finally replaced the ATM for a more modern one.
Right, and you should be. From my expereince, the primary purpose of the Polygraph is being used to tell the dude *you have already decided is guilty * that “the machine said you lied, so you might as well confess” then dudes really do confess. And, a good number of those that confess were really guilty.
Let me make this one thing clear- dudes that claim they were abducted by aliens can & do pass a polygraph test. On this board, that should make any sane poster decide that Polygraphs are crap.
Not entirely. I am a sane poster, and I believe there are people who truthfully think that they were abducted by aliens. Thus, from what you’ve said, polygraphs might be an accurate indicator of what someone believes, if not of objective reality.
Of course, then (in a law enforcement context,) you would still have the problem of ‘okay, suspect X passed the polygraph. Can we prove that he’s so mentally ill that he did such-and-such and really believes that he didn’t do it?’
Not that I believe that polys are even that accurate. But it’s still insufficient evidence that they’re crap.
Interesting. Here they are routine for anybody found not guilty of a crime, or who had the charges dropped (and there’s plenty of other reasons for expungements.) I don’t understand why Michigan would make it difficult for somebody found not guilty of a crime to expunge their record. Heck, in Chicago it’s even possible to expunge convictions given the right circumstances.
in Michigan, you can request to have a conviction “set aside” (viewable only by law enforcement) if and only if all of the following conditions are met:
At least 5 years have passed from conviction date or release from incarceration date, whichever is longer
You have exactly one criminal conviction (and only one, so “2 counts” = more than one, one felony, one misdemeanor = more than one, gun enhancement = more than one etc.)
The conviction cannot be for any form of Criminal Sexual Conduct
4 The conviction cannot be for any crime for which the punishment could have been lifetime probation (mostly big time drug offenses, some levels of homicide IIRC)
and I believe there’s also some language forbidding it if the conviciton is a driving related one (ie drunk driving)>
Criminal records are searchable by anyone who has ten bucks and the name and date of birth of the person searched, some records are even available for free.
THe process to get it set aside costs about $100, and any entity can oppose it (Attorney General, Prosecutor, judge, I’m not sure about victim if any).