COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) -
Members of the state House of Representatives and Gov. Nikki Haley have acted to block a bill that could have allowed thousands of people to have their criminal records wiped out.
Late Tuesday afternoon, the House voted to sustain Haley's veto of a bill that drew heavy fire from law enforcement and crime victim advocates.
The bill was pushed through by Columbia Democrat and attorney Todd Rutherford.
"What this bill would do is it would allow anyone who was successful in achieving a pardon that is not convicted of a violent crime when the victims or law enforcement does not object, it would allow that person to get an expungement," Rutherford said.
As Rutherford indicates, the bill would cover convictions for a range of crimes such as embezzlement, arson, DUI, and lesser degrees of criminal sexual conduct and assault.
Haley's veto message said the bill did not explicitly require a pardon as a pre-condition for someone to apply to clear their records and she called the list of offenses overly broad.
Crime Victims Council spokeswoman Laura Hudson agrees.
"Once that is wiped out, the public doesn't have access to those records. Neither does law enforcement have access to those records, so a law enforcement officer could be stopping someone that had resisted arrest, that had been expunged and not know that the person had that sort of record," Hudson said.
Rutherford says criminal records for lesser offenses make it harder for people who've changed their lives to get work.
"What the governor did by vetoing this is tell a large class of people in South Carolina that rather than go and find a job to feed your family, keeping robbing and stealing in order to do so. Because people are going to feed their families. They're going to eat and so all this bill does is let those people that are not convicted of a violent crime, that no one objected to them getting the pardon, no one objected to them getting their record expunged, allow them to get jobs and that's all this does," Rutherford said.
Hudson joined with SLED Chief Mark Keel and groups representing solicitors and sheriffs.
The vote to uphold the governor's veto was 62-48.
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