Dear Editor,
I am the staffer responsible for SB 108, which is referenced in the article you wrote on Jan. 9 [“
Criminal Justice: Mercy at the Margins,” News]. Your description of the bill – "Whitmire has his own bill, SB 108, designed to make it tougher for minors to be exonerated from crimes they did commit" – is wrong. Senator Whitmire's bill does nothing of the sort. In fact, it allows for minors to have more than one expunction for this type of offense. I believe you saw the removed language and did not actually read the bill. The removed language, not more than one, eliminates the restriction on how many can be expunged.
This is a serious error that makes the work we do harder. This needs to be corrected and, in the future, please understand what you are writing about.