
January 18, 2019
If you watch courtroom dramas on t.v. or in the movies, what you never see are lawyers sitting in courtrooms for hours on end waiting for their cases to be called. That’s how we spend a lot of our time.
Thankfully, most courts allow us to fiddle with our smartphones while we wait and, yesterday, I was surfing the interwebs when I came across an interesting tidbit about “Expungement Day” in Leavenworth, Kansas.
One of those particularly interested in Expungement Day was Jermaine Wilson. In 2007, Wilson was convicted of possession of narcotics, and sentenced to three years in prison. He was determined to change his life when he got out and, upon release, got a good job.
But just a couple of weeks after he started the job, his employer advised him that his criminal record check disqualified him from the position. In order to move forward, Wilson needed to get his criminal record expunged. And he did. And he got a job at Fort Leavenworth, the large Army base that is the town’s largest employer. And then he was elected a Leavenworth city commissioner.
In Leavenworth, the city commissioners elect the mayor. Earlier this month, Wilson was elected mayor.
Good for him.
And good thing I had some free time in court yesterday or you never would have known about this.