Client Acquitted by Jury but Still Branded by Criminal Records, Background Checks
By: Houston Criminal Attorney John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
In 2008 and 2009, The John T. Floyd Law Firm won three acquittals in the cases of Michael Serges, whose ordeal in the Harris County court system was the subject of a Houston Press feature story reporter Chris Vogel.
Serges had been wrongly charged with seven cases of various sex crimes against children, involving allegations made by five different children.
After facing three acquittals, not guilty verdicts, in the first two Serges trials, and with a newly elected District Attorney in town, prosecutors announced they would not proceed with the four remaining cases it had filed against him and dismissed those charges.
That prosecutorial decision proved to be a sticky-wicket for us. We wanted to seek an expunction of Serges’ arrest and trial records on the three acquitted cases and the arrest record on the four dismissed cases, but we quickly remembered that Texas’ expunction law created some sizeable obstacles for us. Let’s begin with the expunction statute itself. Article 55.01 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure requires that the following conditions be met before an expunction can occur:
“(a) A person who has been placed under a custodial or noncustodial arrest for commission of either a felony or misdemeanor is entitled to have all records and files relating to the arrest expunged if:
(1) the person is tried for the offense for which the person was arrested and is:
(A) acquitted by the trial court, except as provided by Subsection (c) of this section; or
(c) A court may not order the expunction of records and files relating to an arrest for an offense for which a person is subsequently acquitted, whether by the trial court or the court of criminal appeals, if the offense for which the person was acquitted arose out of a criminal episode, as defined by Section 3.01, Penal Code the person was convicted of or remains subject to prosecution for at least one other offense occurring during the criminal episode.”
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