Tears and hugs accompanied The Reily Reentry Project, a Feb. 17 clinic helping people erase past criminal offenses from their records. But make no mistake: This wasn’t a favor to them. This is an avenue of pursuit the law entitles to everyone.

Story by Steve Kaufman

Close to 1,500 people lined up outside Roosevelt Perry Elementary School on Broadway between 16th and 17th streets on a cold Saturday morning in mid-February.

The line was already long by 7:45 a.m. even though the doors wouldn’t open until 9.

This was an expungement clinic sponsored by the Louisville Urban League for people who had lived under a cloud for years – never registering to vote, not bothering to apply for jobs, not even going along on their children’s field trips from school – because they had an old criminal record in their pasts.

If they were familiar with the notion of “expungement” – a legal term with specific definitions and parameters – they’d long ago given up on the opportunity as it might apply to them.

Expungement is the process of clearing your record of past criminal offenses. With those on your record, you can’t apply to vote. Applying for jobs is generally a futile endeavor, too.

Perhaps worst of all, you live under a cloud of shame, which isn’t necessary. Kentucky law makes expungement an available option. It very clearly spells out the options depending on what your record is (felony or misdemeanor) and how old the occurrence is. There’s a process of applying to have your records run and then your day in court.

If that’s so, why aren’t more people accessing what the law provides them? Why were there 1,500 people outside of Perry Elementary?

“Because there are costs to pursuing it,” said Sadiqa Reynolds, Louisville Urban League’s president and CEO. “You have to pay to have your records run. You have to hire an attorney. And then there’s a fee for each item on your record – as much as $500 per felony.”

Plus, there’s a general intimidation factor for many people in these circumstances about entering the legal process and the court system. History has shown them that it is not necessarily a forgiving endeavor with a happy outcome.

Reynolds was talking largely about her constituency at the Urban League, Louisville’s inner-city black population. But she was also talking about people of all races toeing the poverty line, people who through need or desperation or lack of guidance, had done things in their past – a DUI, a shoplift, a bad check, a marijuana possession – and were paying for it for a lifetime because they didn’t know they didn’t have to.

Stephen Reily saw the disparity, too. The director of the Speed Art Museum had previously run for Metro District Council. “He’d met people who told him, ‘I’d love to support you, but I can’t vote,’” Reynolds related. “He said, ‘Why are we throwing people away who have paid their dues, served their time?’ He said he wanted to do something.”

And he did.

Reily joined the Urban League board. And, after the Louisville Metro Council gave the Urban League a $10,000 grant last year – “seed money to start a pilot program and see if we could accomplish something,” Reynolds said – Reily gave the league a $300,000 grant this year (to be divided over the next three years) to help Louisville’s unwittingly disenfranchised victims.

“The work I’ve done through the Greater Louisville Project (an independent, non-partisan, civic initiative organized by The Community Foundation of Louisville) has made me so aware of these neighborhoods facing insurmountable challenges because of the history of segregation, redlining (a discriminatory act of refusing a loan to someone because of where they live), etcetera, and you have people in these neighborhoods who want to be a part of their success in turning them around and we’re not letting them?” said Reily, still incredulous about the notion. “It’s not going to happen. So, I reached out to Sadiqa… and I said, ‘Look, what if we tried to go big on this and really do something that made a difference?’”

Reily asked Reynolds to come back to him with a plan. “It’s funny, for whatever reason – I guess we were both really busy – we would always have these conversations on a Saturday, I remember, and she came back and we kept talking about the money and the plan, and finally she said, ‘Here it is,’ and I said, ‘I’m all in.’”

Aside from what Reily had previously seen firsthand and a desire to find “common ground politically,” he said he was motivated by “having a father who taught me to stand up for what I thought was right and I had a mother who taught me to always stand up for the underdog and gave me a heart for justice.

“To be clear, we are talking about something so different than the crime problem in the West End,” he said. “These are not people who were ever convicted of a violent crime. They made mistakes. They paid their price. Expungement means you have the opportunity to be a full citizen again. Your level of citizenship shouldn’t depend on your level of income.”

The event in February was the first gathering of The Reily Reentry Project. Attorneys were on hand to check each person’s records and provide legal guidance. Wyatt Tarrant & Combs took the lead, providing its own attorneys, administrative staffers and paralegals. They also held a two-day training session in their offices. Their own attorneys attended, plus members of Legal Aid and the Black Attorneys Association (now called The Charles W. Anderson Jr. Bar Association), and other local attorneys who wanted to be a part of the project.

The clinic itself was held on a Saturday, so people wouldn’t have to take off work. “I don’t think anyone thought the turnout would be what it was,” said Reynolds. “A lot of lawyers who do mostly corporate law didn’t know how great the need was. These are not usually their clients.”

Still, they worked until past 6 o’clock to get as many records checked as they could. It was not enough – not this time, anyway. While Reynolds estimated that 350 criminal record checks were run (and perhaps 300 of those qualified for expungement), more than 1,000 persons were turned away. There simply wasn’t enough time.

“We need to have another clinic,” said Reynolds, “but first we want to process all the records we ran.”

In a way, though, Reynolds sees a bright spot in a turnout that overwhelmed the ability to serve everyone who showed up.

“I wanted to show that if you provide help, people will come,” she said. “It’s just not true that people won’t put out the effort to help themselves. The reporters there were moved by it. The lawyers there, who do mostly corporate law, were moved by it. The volunteers were moved.”

Reily was moved.

“Many of us were crying frequently throughout the day,” he recalled. “What

was beautiful about that day, and then again what was so different from the picture of violent crime in the West End, is these are people who got their lives together. These are people who could get to Roosevelt Perry Elementary on a Saturday. They just can’t get ahead.”

Reynolds, who was moved to tears numerous times that day, has a ready smile and a sense of humor that’s almost always about to break into a laugh. But when she’s talking about her constituency, there emerges a fierce inner-core of steel. Her gentle voice hardens, and her soft eyes can flare with anger. She insists the problems with the urban underprivileged are manifold: an inconsistency with law enforcement, distrust of the court systems, lack of resources and lack of access. These cause many people to live under the cloud of prior misdeeds that others in the community are able to make disappear.

“For many people, if their daughter gets a DUI, they’re going to hire an attorney for her and she’s not going to have to take off work to show up in court,” said Reynolds. “For poor people, if they get a DUI, they can’t afford an attorney. They’re in court all day; it impacts their jobs and family lives. There’s simply a different way of walking through the process if you live in poverty.”

She says the issue isn’t necessarily a racial one, “but there is a disparity in the way the law is applied. It’s the difference between getting pulled over in Prospect and getting pulled over in the West End.

“Let me be clear,” she continued, “there were a lot of folks on Saturday who weren’t black. Poor people of all color need this. But I don’t want anybody to think that black people aren’t more negatively impacted by the criminal justice system.”

And all of this leads to assumptions about the way certain people live their lives. “There’s this terrible stench about poverty,” Reynolds said. “People think, ‘They don’t want to work; they’re happy on welfare.’ I’m so over it.”

There’s also a lack of information among the poor. Even if a case is dismissed and even if the accused was found to be completely innocent, there’s no automatic expungement. “You still have to be proactive to get your record expunged,” she said. “It doesn’t just happen.”

Reynolds related a Legal Aid story of a man who walked around for 20 years telling people he was a felon, checking the box on job applications. They ran his record and found he was charged with a felony that was amended down to a misdemeanor. “But because he was charged and didn’t understand the law, he was probably denied jobs and lost opportunities,” she explained. “Plus, he never voted.”

Perception can be poison. “One article said, ‘Reily and Urban League to help criminals.’ I sent a note: So is your 20-year-old daughter who got a DUI ‘a criminal’? Or is she a 20-year-old who made a bad choice?”

There’s also a stench, she said, about criminal records: Why should they get their records expunged? They did it. Is there a forgiveness that they don’t deserve?

“This should not be seen as an attempt to circumvent the law,” Reynolds insisted. “It is the law.”

Reily said, “In Louisville, we’re rightfully proud to be such a welcoming city. I think that is, in some ways, our real identity. But we have a long way to go, especially in showing how welcoming we can be to our brothers and sisters who already live here.

“We’re really welcoming to tourists and visitors and people we’re trying to attract for economic development,” he continued, “but the real test is how welcoming we are to our neighbors who are already here. And I believe that spirit can work in the same way, and for most people it’s not always easy to see how; you have to show them.”

Reynolds feels the lines at Perry Elementary that day will have a lasting impact on this community. “Nobody stands in line for hours on a cold Saturday morning in the winter if they have the money to avoid it,” she said. “This was the best evidence that we’re in a compassionate city. Everybody is connected to somebody who has been involved in the system.”

And what does that mean to the community at large? Why should people care?

“It means a healthier, more functional community,” said Reynolds said. “People need and deserve to have a second chance so they can fully engage. You don’t want a community full of people who don’t feel connected, don’t feel hope, don’t feel valued. That is a dangerous community.”

In addition, she said, there’s the positive economic impact of people getting better jobs and being promoted. It means people on the tax rolls instead of the subsistence rolls. It means a safer community, too. She calls it “violence protection.”

Employers understand the need to have a ready workforce. Reynolds said, “This gets them in their pocketbooks.”

But it doesn’t have to be driven by personal needs. She feels it should be driven by the idea that “there, but for the grace of God . . .

“People have to figure out how to have mercy and cheer for justice,” she said, “not just for their own child, their spouse or themselves. We have an obligation to take care of each other. Otherwise, we’re not a truly functional community.” VT