from Texas Lawyer Precious Daniels is not what you'd call a hardened criminal. In 2009, she was arrest- ed for blocking a doorway during a peace- ful protest against a health insurer in Mich- igan — charges that were later dropped. But Daniels claims that single arrest was enough to prevent her from getting a job with the U.S. Census Bureau a few months later when the agency ran her name through a criminal records database. About 92 million Americans — more than one in four adults — have some kind of criminal history, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Whether it was an arrest or a conviction, the charge was for a felony or misdemeanor, the verdict was guilty or innocent or the person was tried as a juvenile or an adult, the records can all show up in background-check by Steven Brownstein You can help physicians take simple steps to protect themselves from becoming subjects of lawsuits or losing sub- stantial revenue. Volume 11 Number 9 September 2011 PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE PAID PERMIT NO. 164 MORTONGROVE, IL Buffalo, New York Courthouse Photograph by Steven Brownstein Article continues on page 3 Story Continues on Page 8
Transcript
from Texas Lawyer Precious Daniels is not what you'd call a hardened criminal. In 2009, she was arrest-ed for blocking a doorway during a peace-ful protest against a health insurer in Mich-igan — charges that were later dropped. But Daniels claims that single arrest was enough to prevent her from getting a job with the U.S. Census Bureau a few months later when the agency ran her name through a criminal records database. About 92 million Americans — more than one in four adults — have some kind of criminal history, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Whether it was an arrest or a conviction, the charge was for a felony or misdemeanor, the verdict was guilty or innocent or the person was tried as a juvenile or an adult, the records can all show up in background-check
by Steven Brownstein You can help physicians take simple steps to protect themselves
from becoming subjects of lawsuits or losing sub-stantial revenue.
Volume 11 Number 9 September 2011
PRSRT STD
U.S. POSTAGE PAID
PERMIT NO. 164 MORTONGROVE, IL
Buffalo, New York Courthouse Photograph by Steven Brownstein
Article continues on page 3
Story Continues on Page 8
Las Vegas Justice Criminal Court Jurisdiction by Steven Brownstein Las vegas Justice Court is the court of first instance for misdemeanors and traf-fic offenses in Las Vegas (Clark County). Some misdemeanors are heard at the Clark County District Court; those that are included as lessor of-fenses to filed felony charg-es. The Clark County District Court records are available at www.clarkcountycourts.us/Anonymous/default.aspx Las Vegas Justice Crimi-nal Court information can not be found online. Just as a sidebar, Las Ve-gas Justice Court civil cases are online. Plus, there are no public access computers in the Clerk's office. Instead, a search is pro-
vide by the Clerk's office, for a fee, and the few sip-mple (?) rules that follow: (From their Website) Criminal Case Record in-formation is available ei-ther in person or by mail. You may obtain records in person from the Las Vegas Justice Court Clerk's Of-fice, 2nd Floor, Regional Justice Center, 200 Lewis Avenue. Customer hours are 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Monday thru Friday, ex-cluding holidays: Or you can request them through the mail. Record searches requested by mail should be sent to: Las Ve-gas Justice Court; Att. Criminal Customer Service Division, P O Box 552511, Las Vegas, NV 89155-2511. For faster mail ser-vice, please include a self-addressed, stamped enve-lope. Please allow up to 21 - 30 judicial (working) days for a response. Case Files for years prior to 2002 are stored in a warehouse. A MINIMUM
of 3 - additional working days is required to order and deliver these files to the Clerk's Office. To min-imize your waiting period, we suggest you send a FAX request listing the Defend-ant Name, Case Number, and type of documents you need. If you provide a tele-phone number or FAX number, the court will noti-fy you when the documents are available. The Clerk's Criminal Office Customer Service Division FAX number is: (702) 671-3175. If you have an inquiry re-garding an arrest or an event number, which oc-curred in the City of Las Vegas, North Las Vegas, Henderson, or in an area outside of the Las Vegas Township, you must con-tact courts in those jurisdic-tions for information. If you wish information on an arrest, or criminal history information, contact the Metropolitan Police De-partment Records Office, their phone number is (702) 795-3111. By Statute, customers must pay the required re-search Fee for criminal case record search requests. The
Fee is $1.00 per Year* searched per Name. Cus-tomers should specify the number of years they wish the record search to cover. Due to Nevada record re-tention standards, once a criminal case is closed the information is retained a maximum of TEN (10) YEARS. Therefore, rec-ords from closed cases old-er than TEN (10) CALEN-DAR YEARS may not be available. To ensure complete cover-age of the search, please provide the following infor-mation: the Defendant's full name (Last, First, MI); Date of Birth; Social Secu-rity Number; or other iden-tifiers. *NOTE: If a specif-ic time period for the search is not given (such as five (5) years), then the full TEN (10) YEAR time peri-od will be searched. The Fee payment should be made to the "Las Vegas Justice Court." Please use a check or money order for the payment. Do not send cash through the mail. Due to Legislative chang-es, fees are collected from non-criminal justice agen-cies, the general public and inmates according to the fee structure guidelines. Any agency of criminal jus-tice will NOT be charged fees as per Nevada Statute 179A.140. All private cus-tomers (research compa-nies, attorneys, etc.) not
covered by this Statute must pay for research and documents. These fees must be provided in ad-vance of the request. Please be aware, if the records are being used for legal purposes, you may wish to have the court "Certify" the documents as "true and correct copies of the original". Fee payments are required for document copies and Certification of Records. The Fee for a Certified Copy of a document is $3.00; and the copying Fee is $ .30 per page. To expedite return of doc-uments, we suggest sending $5.00 to $10.00 by check or money order for the Fee payment. All overpay-ments will be refunded with the returned materials. Information on the status of Criminal matters is also available from the Clark County District Attorney's Office, (702) 671-2500. If you have an inquiry regard-ing a Bad Check, contact the District Attorney's Bad Check Unit at (702) 671-4701.
PUBLISHER Steven Brownstein
CONTRIBUTORS: Mike Sankey, Les Rosen, Dennis Brownstein, Faheem Ebrahim
COVER PHOTOGRAPH: Buffalo, New York Court
COVER PHOTOGRAPHER: Steven Brownstein
PURPOSE: “Dedicated to pre-employment screenings everywhere”
The Background Investigator is published by Steven Brownstein, LLC, PMB 1007, Box 10001, Saipan, MP 96950. Phone: 670-256-7000. Copyright 2011 by Steven Brownstein. Some material in this publication must not be repro-duced by any method without the written permission of the copyright holder.
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Investigator online
databases that have proliferated on the Internet. As employers increasingly use such background checks to screen prospective workers, the practice is creating a minefield of employment law issues — and has caught the attention of the U.S. Equal Employment Oppor-tunity Commission. On July 26, the EEOC held a packed public meeting in Washington focusing on how the use of background checks adversely affects minori-ties, since blacks and Hispanics are much more likely to have criminal histories. The commissioners hinted that they plan to revise the EEOC's 20-year-old background-check guidelines, a prospect that has alarmed the business community and triggered fears of burden-some new regulations. Employers argue that they have a legitimate need to check out prospective workers to protect customers and co-workers and, indeed, that failing to do so could expose them to lawsuits for neg-
ligent hiring. According to a re-cent survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, 92% of employers conduct crimi-nal-background checks some of the time, and 73% do so for eve-ry position. "We have to strike a balance between having a safe workplace and giving someone a second chance," said Buena Vista Lyons, a Dallas partner at Ford & Harri-son who defends businesses in labor and employment matters. "Employers don't want the EEOC to create rigid regulations.…If they come up with unrealis-tic standards, it's not going to help anyone, and it's not going to help the economy." The National Retail Federation, the National Restaurant Associa-tion and 11 other trade groups, which together claim to represent industries that account for more than 55 million jobs, sent a letter to the EEOC in late July urging the agency not to bar criminal background checks. "As long as there is workplace violence, fraud, theft, and a need to protect vulnerable populations, there will always be a need to review the criminal histories of applicants for certain positions," the letter stated. "[W]e want the flexibility to conduct criminal background checks that are fair and appropri-ate." For the EEOC, the question is: What does fair and appropriate mean? The policy implications are profound. As EEOC Chairwom-
an Jacqueline Berrien noted at the meeting, it costs taxpayers $56 billion a year to keep people locked up. Ex-offenders who don't find employment are three times more likely to return to prison than those who have jobs. "We recognize the importance to individuals of dismantling un-necessary roadblocks to employ-ment, if and when arrest and con-viction records are used inappro-priately or unnecessarily," Ber-rien said. Of particular concern to the EEOC is the effect on minorities. One in 106 white men is current-ly incarcerated, compared with one in 36 Hispanic men and one in 15 African-American men, according to Amy Solomon, who is senior adviser to the assistant attorney general in the Depart-ment of Justice Office of Justice Programs. "To me, there will be a dispar-ate impact if [employers] are going to be using criminal histo-ries," said EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum, a Democrat, at the meeting. Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, an employment policy may be con-sidered illegal if it has a discrimi-natory effect — even if the em-ployer didn't intend to discrimi-nate. The counterweight for em-ployers is to show that the policy is a business necessity and has a "manifest relationship" to the job in question. Current EEOC guidelines make it clear that an absolute ban on hiring anyone with a criminal conviction is unacceptable. In-
stead, the guidelines call for em-ployers to make individual as-sessments of ex-cons, taking into account the nature and gravity of the offense, the time passed since conviction and the job itself. It's not always an easy call. "Obviously you're not going to hire a convicted embezzler to work as a bank teller or a child molester to work with children, but for every no-brainer like this, there are 10 combinations in a gray area," said Travis Gemoets, a partner at Jeffer, Mangels, But-ler & Mitchell in Los Angeles. "You have to look at what some-one would do in the course and scope of employment." For example, Juan Cartagena, president and general counsel of Latino Justice, cited a pending case involving a young Latino man who worked for an Eckerd Pharmacy stocking shelves and was promoted to supervisor. But after the drug store chain was bought by Rite Aid Corp., he was fired because he had a prior drug conviction. On one hand, a drug store refus-ing to employ someone with a drug conviction sounds logical. But Cartagena argues that the policy is too broad. "Large chains are not simple pharma-cies," he said — they're more like variety stores, selling every-thing from lawn chairs to frozen pizza. These were the kinds of items the man handled — not drugs. "The pharmacy stocks their own shelves and accounts for their own inventory," Carta-gena said, arguing that the ban
was needlessly restrictive. EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru shared the concern. "One thing that's been troubling to me is that so many employers use this in an overbroad fashion, so that it affects all their jobs, and all their applicants for jobs," said Ishimaru, who is a Demo-crat. "Are they losing out on good employees who would do a fine job for them?"
From Jail To Jobless, continued from front page
Continues on Page 10
Cook County, IL Civil Cases Online by Steven Brownstein The Clerk of the Circuit Court offers on-line access to the full electronic docket for cases filed in the Civil, Law, Chancery, and Do-mestic Relations divisions. The Electronic Docket Search includes infor-mation similar to that found on the Clerk's Public Ac-cess terminals located in the various courthouses. The cases are searchable by litigant name, case num-ber, or filing date. Search Results are limited to the first 1000 cases. That could be rather daunting. It pays to use a researcher in Cook County. Website: http://198.173.15.34/?sec-tion=CASEINFOPage&CASEINFOPage=2400
Will County, IL Cases Online by Steven Brownstein The Clerk of the Circuit Court offers on-line access to limited electronic docket for cases filed in the Circuit Court. The information seems similar to that found on the Clerk's Public Access ter-minals located in the vari-ous courthouses. Their disclaimer may be due to the fact that the cas-es might not be uploaded to their Web Site as quickly as it is entered into their com-puter system. Felonies, misdemeanors, traffic, ordinance viola-tions, and civil cases are found on their results page, as well as defendant identi-fiers.
How long that will last no one knows. The cases are searchable by party, case number, tck-et number, or business name. Website: http://66.158.72.242/pa/cms/SearchPrompt.php
Cuyahoga County Cases Online by Steven Brownstein The Cuyahoga Common Pleas Court offers on-line access to electronic docket for cases filed in the Circuit Court. The information found did not include misdemanor and lessor cases normally found at the Cleveland and other Municipal Courthous-es. Those need to be re-searched separately. Felonies are found on their results page, as well as defendant identifiers. The cases are searchable by name or case number. Website: http://
cpdock-et.cp.cuyahogacounty.us/p_PickSearch.aspx
EEOC Says: "Your Customer Needs To Be Fair" Among all racial groups, African-American unem-ployment hovers at 16.2 percent, the highest in the nation. For Black males, it's 17.5 percent, and for Black
teens, it's nearly 41 percent. The U.S. Equal Employ-ment Opportunity Commis-sion (EEOC) believes that it’s not by chance that Black unemployment num-bers are so high. The EEOC considers criminal background checks as a possible con-tributing factor to Black unemployment because 92 percent of employers con-duct the screenings on some or all job applicants, according to a 2010 Society for Human Resources Man-agement survey.
In 1996, the number of criminal screenings was only 51 percent. Due to the large increase of criminal screenings in less than 20 years, the EEOC is investigating how the federal government is dealing with employers who illegally screen out applicants based on prior arrests or convictions—without investigating the applicant’s age, relevance of the criminal record or seriousness of the crime, as described under the EEOC’s guidelines based Continues next page
on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC guidelines reg-ulating employers’ use of criminal records dates back over twenty years to 1987. In it the EEOC makes clear that "an employer's policy or practice of ex-cluding individuals from employment on the basis of their conviction records has an adverse impact on
Blacks and Hispanics in light of statistics showing that they are convicted at a rate disproportionately greater than their represen-tation in the population."
Hire that Felon, You Racist! A Blog by Amy Ridenour
...One the one hand, the EEOC is telling employers, “don’t worry, hire crimi-nals, they are contributing members of society.” But on the other hand, an EEOC spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal, “if ex-offenders are not given jobs the chances are that
they may re-offend.” So these folks will commit more crimes if companies don’t hire them, but they will be model employees if corporations do employ them? Yeah, that makes sense. The EEOC needs to aban-don this misguided guid-ance and let employers re-sume hiring based on valid business considerations. America does not have a crisis of too few regula-tions. It has a crisis of too few jobs. Perhaps, if we got rid of some of the for-mer, we could have more of the latter.
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Your Customers Need To Be Fair, continued
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Trademarks, Trade Names and Notaries in Wisconsin The management and record keeping of the Notary, Trademarks and Trade Names in Wisconsin has transferred from the Secretary of State's Office to the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions. Effective July 2011, the addresses, phone num-bers, and URLs have changed. The new physical location is 345 W Washington, 3rd Fl, Madison WI 53703. The new phone number is 608-266-8915, the fax is 608-264-7965. The home page is now http://www.wdfi.org/. Both divisions offer online search capabilities at the new URL. Search trademark and trade name information at http://dfi.nmtvault.com/Trademarks.aspx. Search the Notary Public database at http://dfi.nmtvault.com/Notary.aspx. Driver's License Status Check in Kansas Kansas recently unveiled a new service that allows one to check the status of a KS issued driver's license. The DL #, full name and DOB are required. The information must be entered as it appears on the driver's license, with no dashes or spaces. The direct link is: https://www.kdor.org/DLStatus/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2fdlstatus%2fsecure%2fdefault.aspx. (Or you can go to home page at www.ksrevenue.org/ and click on the appropriate link.) Illinois Public Record Searchers The Illinois Department of Professional Regulation recently issued a "cease and de-sist" letter to a PRRN (Public Record Retriever Network - www.prrn.us) member based in Illinois for performing public record research and not having a private in-vestigator's license. The Department interpreted that the act of researching public records is considered to be performing an "investigation." This is regardless if the PRRN Member was merely researching and reporting to a attorney, private investigator, or consumer re-porting agency (CRA) what is found in a court's public record docket. The licensing of Private Investigators is governed by 225 ILCS §447. Article 5 de-fines, in part, that a private investigator is someone who "...engages in the business of, accepts employment to furnish, or agrees to make or makes investigations for a fee or other consideration..." Articles 10 and 15 list exemptions. See the statute at www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs2.asp?ChapterID=24 Interestingly, similar situations occured several years ago in Arizona and Texas. The states had similar laws to IL. A PRRN members was actually thrown in jail in Tex-as. But the issues were resolved and the end result is that public record researchers are not required to be licensed as PIs when simply hired by private investigators or Consumer Reporting Agencies (CRA) to report facts in the public records. If this issue is of interest, there is an older, but still applicable article titled "The Trouble With PI Licensing Statutes" written by Carl Ernst, found on the BRB Publi-cations site at www.brbpublications.com/articles.aspx.
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Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Holds Meeting on Use of Criminal Records for Employment Screen-ing Background Checks The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) – the agency of the United States Government that enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination – held a meeting Tuesday, July 26, 2011 focusing on the use of criminal records by em-ployers for employment screening background checks, according to the EEOC press release ‘Striking the Balance Be-tween Workplace Fairness and Workplace Safety.’ At the meeting, the Commis-sion was told by experts that employers refusing to hire people with arrest and conviction records even years after they have com-pleted their sentences may cause recidivism and higher social services costs, but also that businesses face confusing and conflicting laws when using sometimes unreliable arrest and con-viction records in making employment decisions. The meeting – part of a series convened by the EEOC to examine the im-plications of various hiring practices – was designed to
identify and highlight ways in which arrest and convic-tion records have been used appropriately and current legal standards. The EEOC has already issued written policy guidance regarding the use of arrest and con-viction records in employ-ment and the meeting was an opportunity to “learn about the practical ways employers have been able to balance business con-cerns with the need to en-sure that employment prac-tices are fair and non-discriminatory,” according to EEOC Chair Jacqueline A. Berrien. Some in the meeting com-mented that removing arbi-trary bars to hiring people with arrest and conviction records improves job avail-ability and lowers crime and social costs, and also urged employers to develop and implement a “responsible business plan” and overcome “fears, biases and hiring challenges” in order to facilitate hiring people with arrest and con-viction records. Others in the meeting de-tailed to the EEOC the con-fusing and often contradic-tory pressures on business-es when using arrest and conviction records in mak-
ing employment decisions – including conflicting laws – and urged the Commis-sion to consider these con-straints on businesses in deciding whether to pursue litigation in certain cases. Noting the unreliability of criminal record databases, the EEOC was warned about the proliferation of online companies offering “instant” background checks that generate reports that often contain inaccu-rate or incomplete infor-mation and rarely any de-tails about criminal record information. Attorney Lester Rosen, CEO of Employment Screening Resources (ESR), commented on the EEOC press release for the meeting. “It is a valid point that the proliferation of cheap and instant online databases can have a higher degree of inaccurate results. However, the speakers did not distinguish between professional background screeners and cheap online data websites,” says Rosen, author of ‘The Safe Hiring Manual,’ the first compre-hensive guide to employ-ment screening. “A real background screening firm is obligated under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to take a number of measures
to ensure accuracy. The one quick fix that would help employers and job appli-cants is to make the rule in California where a criminal record cannot be reported unless it has been con-firmed to be accurate and up to date, which normally requires reconfirmation the courthouse, a nationwide rule.” In addition, Rosen said some of the meeting’s testi-mony seemed to lack real world experiences where employers that are trying to
keep their business running and provide jobs in a reces-sion can ill afford to hire unsafe, unfit, dangerous or dishonest people. “I am not sure that even the EEOC has hired a person with a criminal record,” says Rosen. “When you are not actually running a business, or meeting payroll, it is easy to become a Monday morning quarterback and try to shift the solution to social ills on employers al-ready stressed by a reces-sion.”
Les Rosen’s Corner
A monthly column By Lester Rosen, Attorney at Law
Obviously, these steps in-clude conducting back-ground checks of staff and other physicians. It is not, at least to us in the employment screening industry, common knowledge that no federal health benefit payments are permitted for services fur-nished by persons excluded
by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services 'Centers for Mediacre and Medicaid Services (CMS)'. Additionally, the govern-ment may impose a civil monetary penalty of up to $10,000.00 for each item or service furnished during the CMS exclusion period. Considering this prohibi-tion, many physician prac-tices hire excluded individ-uals. Surprsing as that is, it is a money make for us. Checking an employee's or physician's background
status for exclusion is rela-tively simple and there are
The New Cost Of Canadian Criminal Pardons By Paula Mallea The Conservative govern-ment, with the collabora-tion of opposition parties, hastily passed a piece of legislation (Bill C-23A) last year which makes it more difficult for offenders to obtain a pardon for their offences. This was the gov-ernment's response to the
news that notorious child-molester Graham James had received a pardon, and that Karla Homolka would soon be eligible to apply. In its efforts to deal quick-ly with a perceived gap in the law, the Harper govern-ment has again passed leg-islation which will adverse-ly affect thousands of of-fenders needlessly. From introduction to royal assent, the new procedure for ob-taining pardons became law in 49 days. The new law sets out longer eligibility dates for offenders, and makes it much harder to convince the National Parole Board that a pardon should be granted. As a consequence, it will now take much long-er to process each applica-tion. The government thus needs to increase the NPB's budget. It proposes to re-cover the costs by charging a higher fee for applica-tions. The Harper government is about to raise the cost of obtaining a pardon to $631 from $150. Yet when the fee was raised from $50 to $150 last year, one person who helps offenders obtain pardons said it was "earth-shattering for hundreds of our clients." Quadrupling the new fee will ensure that very few offenders can af-ford to apply. For most offenders, ob-taining a pardon is abso-lutely essential in order to obtain housing and employ-ment. These are necessary components for the rehabil-itation and reintegration of offenders when they have served their sentences. Even Public Safety Minis-ter Vic Toews agrees: "I certainly believe in the con-cept of pardons, they're an absolutely essential part of the rehabilitation of indi-viduals." Mr. Toews engaged the public in a short consulta-tion process about raising the fees, as he is required to do under the federal User
Fees Act. Of the 1,086 indi-viduals and organizations that responded, only 12 were in favour of raising the fee. 98% said the pro-posal was "appalling", "outrageous", "preposterous", "downright criminal", and a "cash grab." They said that the new fee would affect dis-proportionately the poor, disadvantaged, and margin-alized. Nonetheless, the government is forging ahead. 4.2 million Canadians have criminal records. Most people who apply for par-dons do so in order to get a job. Offenders who have no job, or have a low-paying job, will not be able to af-ford the application pro-cess, and so they will not be able to improve their circumstances. This is Catch-22 writ large. The government says that $631 is what it costs to pro-cess a pardon application. The government has not made public the report that contains the cost break-down or the rationale for the new fee. The govern-ment also takes the position that offenders should pay for their own applications, and not the taxpayer. Yet the government knows par-dons are an essential com-ponent of rehabilitation. Leaving aside the humani-tarian aspects, the govern-ment must know that peo-ple will not be able to con-tribute to the economic productivity of the nation if they are saddled with crimi-nal records. Bill C-23 is a mean-spirited law. It will keep thousands of former of-fenders from obtaining par-dons, a process which used to be straightforward, af-fordable and sensible. Lest the reader think that par-dons are being granted to violent, repeat offenders, it is important to point out that 38.6% of pardons granted in the last 10 years went to victimless offend-ers: impaired driving, driv-ing over 80, drug offences
Background Checks For The The Medical Industry continued from Page 1
and failing to appear in court. About 50% went to
property offences: theft, break and enter and theft, theft under $1,000 and mis-chief. Only 12% went to offenders who were con-victed of assault. In the past 10 years,
247,438 people obtained pardons. Now all applicants will have to go through a longer and more expensive process, with less likeli-hood of success. Many of them will not even be able to start the process. Was all
this necessary in order to keep Karla Homolka from obtaining a pardon? readily available sources of information to you to search. These include the Health
Depts.Office of the Inspec-tor General's Exclusion List (http://oig.hhs.gov/fraud/exclusions.asp) and the General Service Admin-istration's Excluded Parties List System (www.epls.gov) These lists are updated constantly and provide enough information to de-termine if a candidate has been excluded.
No Unemployed Need Apply (NUNA) If you are employed, chances are you have not heard of NUNA. However, if you are ac-tively seeking a job and have been doing so for a while, you are probably familiar with the phrase “No Unemployed Need Apply.” This is a standard that many businesses are adopt-ing and simply means they will not hire an applicant who is not currently em-ployed or has recently been laid off. It’s no secret that compa-nies prefer not to hire workers who have gaps in their employment, as it of-ten signals that something about the applicant is unde-sirable to other companies. In fact, it’s not difficult to find companies on various job boards that post their preference for candidates who are currently em-ployed. The question many have for this practice, however, is can companies legally do this?
The New Cost Of Canadian Pardons, continued
Line Up At Jefferson County, AL Courthouse Many would argue that
the lines at the Jefferson County Courthouse for eve-ryday services, such as car tag renewals, are already too long. Now with the forthcoming illegal immi-gration law, those lines could grow even longer.
Needless to say, taxpayers don’t like it. "My legs. My back. I don't like staying in those lines," Tracy Sanchez said. Alabama’s new immigra-
tion law takes effect Sep-tember 1 and county work-ers believe it could have an effect on service at the courthouse, preventing peo-ple from conducting busi-ness online.
A provision of the law says "Any person entering into a business transaction or attempting to enter into a business transaction with this state or political subdi-vision of this state shall be required to demonstrate his or her United States citizen-ship." This means people can no longer apply for car tags or drivers licenses online be-cause they won’t be able to prove their citizenship. "I don't think we have enough employees at the courthouse to do that,” Gre-ta Hogg said. “That's going to be a prob-lem.,’ he added. "Our lines are going to get longer and longer, and it's unnecessary,” county com-missioner George Bowman said. “One of the purposes of automation is to shorten the lines." At the time of publication, Commissioners were hop-ing for a special legislative session, or for a federal court to order an injunction to prevent the law from go-ing into effect.
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One impetus for the EEOC to update its guidelines comes from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3d Cir-cuit. In a rare appellate de-cision on the use of crimi-nal-background checks, the court in 2007 complained that the EEOC's guidelines were too vague to be of much use. The plaintiff in the case, Douglas El, claimed that the Southeastern Pennsyl-vania Transportation Au-thority improperly disquali-fied job applicants because of prior convictions. El, who drove a bus, was fired when his employer learned of his 40-year-old convic-tion for second-degree mur-der. The court expressed "reservations" about the transportation authority's policy, but ruled against El because he didn't hire an expert witness and couldn't rebut the defense's expert testimony that someone who committed a violent crime once is more likely to do so again, no matter how much time has passed. The court complained that the EEOC's guidelines don't explain how employers are supposed to consider the nature and gravity of the offense in crafting any bright-line policy on crimi-nal convictions, nor do they address whether an em-ployer can decide that cer-tain offenses (like murder) are serious enough to war-rant a lifetime ban on being hired. "The EEOC's guide-lines are not entitled to great deference," wrote Judge Thomas Ambro for the unanimous panel. "The policy document itself does not substantively analyze the statute." What new EEOC guide-lines might look like is not clear, but one option dis-cussed at the meeting was banning employers from
asking about old convic-tions. Solomon of the Justice Department cited a study on the "point of redemp-tion" — when a person with a prior arrest becomes no more likely than mem-bers of the general popula-tion to commit another crime. The study found the point exists between three and eight years after release from jail, depending on the severity of the crime and the person's age. "Should [employers] just stop asking…at some point?" Ishimaru said. "There's a time at which it's no longer relevant statisti-cally," Solomon replied. But George Washington University Law School pro-fessor Stephen Saltzburg argued that this would be of little practical use. When people are released from jail, he said, "They need jobs now. You can't tell them to wait three or four years and if you have a clean record, great, because if they can't get a job, they're not going to have a clean record." Some lawyers fear the agency going forward may tell employers not to ask about criminal history in initial job applications (though they can ask later in the hiring process). Such "ban the box" rules are in place in the states of Mas-sachusetts and Hawaii, plus cities such as Philadelphia. It's not a popular option with defense-side employ-ment lawyers, who say it places an extra burden on employers. "They're invest-ing resources in interview-ing people who would not be considered," said Susan Lessack, a partner in the Berwyn, Pa., and Philadel-phia offices of Pepper Hamilton. At the same time, there are also thousands of feder-al and state restrictions bar-ring employers from hiring people with certain convic-
tions, especially in the fi-nancial services, child care, health care and transporta-tion industries — re-strictions that go all the way down to local rules for licensed barbers. The EEOC guidelines do not have the force of law — they're most useful for helping companies avoid being sued. Overall, litiga-tion over criminal back-ground checks has been scant, though there's been a recent uptick in activity. Lawyers are watching EEOC v. Freeman Cos., pending in U.S. district court in Maryland, which challenges the use of crimi-nal-background checks, as well as the use of credit checks, as a screening tool for new hires. Another recent effort by the EEOC to challenge a company's criminal back-ground policy ended in hu-miliation for the agency, which was hit with $750,000 in attorney fees and court costs in March. After a three-year investi-gation, the EEOC in 2008
sued temporary staffing company Peoplemark Inc. in Michigan federal court for allegedly refusing to hire any person with a criminal record. The EEOC named 286 so-called vic-tims of the policy — except it turned out that 22% of them had in fact been hired by the company despite their felony records. "The complaint turned out to be without foundation from the beginning," wrote Mag-istrate Judge Hugh Bren-neman Jr. Peoplemark was repre-sented by Barris, Sott, Denn & Driker in Detroit and Southern firm Baker, Donelson, Bear-man, Cald-well & Berkowitz. The biggest pending case — what plaintiffs' lawyer Adam Klein, a partner at Outten & Golden in New York, calls "the megatsuna-mi of background check cases" — is one against the federal government, chal-lenging the hiring policies used for the 2010 census. According to the com-plaint filed last year in U.S.
District Court for the Southern District of New York, the U.S. Census Bu-reau, as a precondition of employment, required near-ly all job applicants to pro-vide within 30 days "official court documenta-tion" for any and all arrests, regardless of whether a conviction resulted, the na-ture of the offense or when it took place. Among the applicants was Precious Daniels, who was told by her local court that there was no record of her arrest in the health care protest since the charges were dropped. Nonetheless, Dan-iels, who is black, was dis-qualified for a job with the census. According to the com-plaint, the requirement eliminated 93% of appli-cants with criminal histo-ries — about 700,000 peo-ple — who couldn't find their records or submit them quickly enough, or who just gave up. For the few who did send them in, they found
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From Jail To Jobless Contimued from page 3
virtually all available posi-tions had already been filled. The plaintiffs allege that the policy violated Title VII. If the case is certified as a class, Klein sees poten-tial for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Still, the case is an anoma-ly. As Klein noted, it's "very difficult as a private lawyer to litigate these cas-es.…The guidance be-comes critical."
ACLU Goes To War With Police The American Civil Lib-erties Union is bringing its heavy artillery to bear on the mobile location privacy debate. The civil advocacy group has coordinated 34 of its offices to send 375 public records requests to police and law enforcement agen-cies across the nation, re-questing comprehensive information about how po-lice obtain and use cell-phone locations and other Internet data to hunt crimi-nals. "All too often, the govern-ment is taking advantage of outdated privacy laws to get its hands on this valua-ble private information by demanding it without a warrant," the ACLU said in a statement on its website. "The public has a right to know how and under what circumstances their location information is being ac-cessed by the government –- and that is exactly what we hope our information
re-
quests will uncover."
From Jail To Jobless, Continued from previous page
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Australia's New Background Check Laws A new scheme to provide more thorough security checks for those working with children and vulnera-ble adults will be intro-duced in the ACT next year. The Government has reached agreement with the mental health and drug and alcohol sectors to imple-ment the new laws over six years. Community Services Min-ister Joy Burch says the new scheme will bring uni-form standards to back-ground checks. "All services to children and vulnerable Canberrans will have the same check-ing process. Also part of this is the issue of a card so workers will have a clear-ance card, a suitability card, that they can transfer re-gardless of what job they're in," she said. "Volunteers form a key part of work across our community. So volunteers will also be issued with a card and there will be no charge for that card for vol-unteers." The mental health and drug and alcohol sectors had previously been reluc-tant to move to the new scheme because of con-cerns on how it would im-pact on employees who have 'lived experience'. "What we've done with this is make sure there's a common assessment and we will phase in this check-ing system over a couple of years," Ms Burch said. "The drug and alcohol and mental health sector will come in at the latter part of this so all the systems will be very clear and transpar-ent when those workforce are checked."
Ms Burch says there will now be a final round of community consultation over the next month.
Can Lawyers Get Any Dumber? Lawyer: "Do you know how far pregnant you are now?" Witness: "I'll be three months on November 8." Lawyer: "Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8?" Witness: "Yes." Lawyer: "What were you doing at that time?"
As Criminal Laws Proliferate, More Are Ensnared By Gary Fields and John R. Emshwiller
Eddie Leroy Anderson of Craigmont, Idaho, is a re-tired logger, a former sci-ence teacher and now a fed-eral criminal thanks to his arrowhead-collecting hob-by. In 2009, Mr. Anderson loaned his son some tools to dig for arrowheads near a favorite campground of theirs. Unfortunately, they were on federal land. Au-thorities "notified me to get a lawyer and a damn good one," Mr. Anderson recalls. There is no evidence the Andersons intended to break the law, or even knew the law existed, ac-cording to court records and interviews. But the law, the Archaeological Re-sources Protection Act of 1979, doesn't require crimi-nal intent and makes it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to at-tempt to take artifacts off federal land without a per-mit. Faced with that reality, the two men, who didn't find arrowheads that day, plead-ed guilty to a misdemeanor and got a year's probation and a $1,500 penalty each. "We kind of wonder why it got took to the level that it did," says Mr. Anderson, 68 years old. Wendy Olson, the U.S. Attorney for Idaho, said the men were on an archeologi-cal site that was 13,000 years old. "Folks do need to pay attention to where they are," she said. The Andersons are two of the hundreds of thousands of Americans to be charged and convicted in recent decades under federal crim-inal laws—as opposed to state or local laws—as the federal justice system has
dramatically expanded its authority and reach. As federal criminal stat-utes have ballooned, it has become increasingly easy for Americans to end up on the wrong side of the law. Many of the new federal laws also set a lower bar for conviction than in the past: Prosecutors don't necessari-ly need to show that the defendant had criminal in-tent. These factors are contrib-uting to some unusual ap-plications of justice. Father-and-son arrowhead lovers can't argue they made an innocent mistake. A lobster importer is convicted in the U.S. for violating a Hondu-ran law that the Honduran government disavowed. A Pennsylvanian who injured her husband's lover doesn't face state criminal charg-es—instead, she faces fed-eral charges tied to an inter-national arms-control trea-ty. The U.S. Constitution mentions three federal crimes by citizens: treason, piracy and counterfeiting. By the turn of the 20th cen-tury, the number of crimi-nal statutes numbered in the dozens. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 crimes in federal statutes, according to a 2008 study by retired Louisiana State University law professor John Baker. There are also thousands of regulations that carry criminal penalties. Some laws are so complex, schol-ars debate whether they represent one offense, or scores of offenses. Counting them is impossi-ble. The Justice Department spent two years trying in the 1980s, but produced only an estimate: 3,000 fed-eral criminal offenses. The American Bar Asso-ciation tried in the late 1990s, but concluded only that the number was likely much higher than 3,000. The ABA's report said "the amount of individual citi-
zen behavior now potential-ly subject to federal crimi-nal control has increased in astonishing proportions in the last few decades." A Justice spokeswoman said there was no quantifia-ble number. Criminal stat-utes are sprinkled through-out some 27,000 pages of the federal code. There are many reasons for the rising tide of laws. It's partly due to lawmakers responding to hot-button issues—environmental messes, financial machina-tions, child kidnappings, consumer protection—with calls for federal criminal penalties. Federal regula-tions can also carry the force of federal criminal law, adding to the legal complexity. With the growing number of federal crimes, the num-ber of people sentenced to federal prison has risen nearly threefold over the past 30 years to 83,000 an-nually. The U.S. population grew only about 36% in that period. The total feder-al prison population, over 200,000, grew more than eightfold—twice the growth rate of the state prison population, now at 2 million, according the fed-eral Bureau of Justice Sta-tistics Tougher federal drug laws account for about 30% of people sentenced, a decline from over 40% two decades ago. The proportion of peo-ple sentenced for most oth-er crimes, such as firearms possession, fraud and other non-violent offenses, has doubled in the past 20 years. The growth in federal law has produced benefits. Fed-eral legislation was indis-pensable in winning civil rights for African-Americans. Some of the new laws, including those tackling political corruption and violent crimes, are rela-tively noncontroversial and address significant prob-lems. Plenty of convicts
deserve the punishment they get. Roscoe Howard, the for-mer U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, ar-gues that the system "isn't broken." Congress, he says, took its cue over the dec-ades from a public less tol-erant of certain behaviors. Current law provides a range of options to protect society, he says. "It would be horrible if they started repealing laws and taking those options away." Still, federal criminal laws can be controversial. Some duplicate existing state criminal laws, and others address matters that might better be handled as civil rather than criminal mat-ters. Some federal laws appear picayune. Unauthorized use of the Smokey Bear image could land an offender in prison. So can unauthorized use of the slogan "Give a Hoot, Don't Pollute." The spread of federal stat-ues has opponents on both sides of the aisle, though for different reasons. For Republicans, the issue is partly about federal intru-sions into areas historically handled by states. For Democrats, the concerns include the often lengthy prison sentences that feder-al convictions now pro-duce. Those expressing con-cerns include the American Civil Liberties Union and Edwin Meese III, former attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. Mr. Meese, now with the conservative Heritage Foundation, argues Ameri-cans are increasingly vul-nerable to being "convicted for doing something they never suspected was ille-gal." "Most people think crimi-nal law is for bad people," says Timothy Lynch of Ca-to Institute, a libertarian think tank. People don't re-alize "they're one misstep
away from the nightmare of a federal indictment." Last September, retired race-car champion Bobby Unser told a congressional hearing about his 1996 mis-demeanor conviction for accidentally driving a snowmobile onto protected federal land, violating the Wilderness Act, while lost in a snowstorm. Though the judge gave him only a $75 fine, the 77-year-old racing legend got a criminal rec-ord. Mr. Unser says he was charged after he went to authorities for help finding his abandoned snowmobile. "The criminal doesn't usu-ally call the police for help," he says. A Justice Department spokesman cited the age of the case in declining to comment. The U.S. Attor-ney at the time said he did-n't remember the case. Some of these new federal statutes don't require prose-cutors to prove criminal intent, eroding a bedrock principle in English and American law. The absence of this provision, known as mens rea, makes prosecu-tion easier, critics argue. A study last year by the Heritage Foundation and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers analyzed scores of pro-posed and enacted new laws for nonviolent crimes in the 109th Congress of 2005 and 2006. It found of the 36 new crimes created, a quarter had no mens rea requirement and nearly 40% more had only a "weak" one. Some jurists are disturbed by the diminished require-ment to show criminal in-tent in order to convict. In a 1998 decision, federal ap-pellate judge Richard Pos-ner, a noted conservative, attacked a 1994 federal law under which an Illinois man went to prison for three years for possessing guns while under a state
restraining order taken out by his estranged wife. He possessed the guns oth-erwise legally, they posed no immediate threat to the spouse, and the restraining order didn't mention any weapons bar. "Congress created, and the Department of Justice sprang, a trap" on a defend-ant who "could not have suspected" he was commit-ting a crime, Judge Posner wrote. Another area of concern among some jurists is the criminalization of issues that they consider more ap-propriate to civil lawsuits. In December, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considered liberal, overturned the fraud con-viction of a software-company executive accused of helping to issue false financial statements. The government tried "to stretch criminal law beyond its proper bounds," wrote the Circuit's chief judge, Alex Kozinski. Civil law, he said, is a bet-ter tool to judge "gray area" conduct—actions that might, or might not, be ille-gal. Criminal law, he said, "should clearly separate conduct that is criminal from conduct that is legal." Occasionally, Americans are going to prison in the U.S. for violating the laws and rules of other countries. Last year, Abner Schoen-wetter finished 69 months in federal prison for con-spiracy and smuggling. His conviction was related to importing the wrong kinds of lobsters and bulk pack-aging them in plastic, rather than separately in boxes, in violation of Honduran laws. According to court rec-ords and interviews, Mr. Schoenwetter had been im-porting lobsters from Hon-duras since the mid-1980s.
In early 1999, federal offi-cials seized a 70,000-pound shipment after a tip that the load violated a Honduran statute setting a minimum size on lobsters that could be caught. Such a shipment, in turn, violated a U.S. law, the Lacey Act, which makes it a felony to import fish or wildlife if it breaks another country's laws. Roughly 2% of the seized shipment was clearly un-dersized, and records indi-cated other shipments car-ried much higher percent-ages, federal officials said. In an interview, Mr. Schoenwetter, 65 years old, said he and other buyers routinely accepted a per-centage of undersized lob-sters since the deliveries from the fishermen inevita-bly included smaller ones. He also said he didn't be-lieve bringing in some un-dersized lobsters was ille-gal, noting that previous shipments had routinely passed through U.S. Cus-toms. After conviction, Mr. Schoenwetter and three co-defendants appealed, and the Honduran government filed a brief on their behalf saying that Honduran courts had invalidated the undersized-lobster law. By a two-to-one vote, howev-er, a federal appeals panel found the Honduran law valid at the time of the trial and upheld the convictions. The dissenting jurist, Judge Peter Fay, wrote: "I think we would be shocked should the tables be re-versed and a foreign nation simply ignored one of our court rulings." Robert Kern, a 62-year-old Virginia hunting-trip organizer, was also prose-cuted in the U.S. for alleg-edly breaking the law of another country. Instead of lobsters from Honduras, Mr. Kern's troubles stemmed from moose from Russia. He faced a 2008 Lacey Act prosecution for alleg-
edly violating Russian law after some of his clients shot game from a helicopter in that country. In the end, he was acquitted after a Russian official testified the hunters had an exemp-tion from the helicopter hunting ban. Still, legal bills totaling more than $860,000 essentially wiped out his retirement savings, Mr. Kern says. Justice Department offi-cials declined to comment on Messrs. Kern and Schoenwetter. One area of expansion has been environmental crimes. Since its inception in 1970, the Environmental Protec-tion Agency has grown to enforce some 25,000 pages of federal regulations, equivalent to about 15% of the entire body of federal rules. Many of the EPA rules carry potential crimi-nal penalties. Krister Evertson, a would-be in-ventor, recently spent 15 months in prison for envi-ronmental crimes where there was no evidence he harmed anyone, or intended to. In May 2004 he was ar-rested near Wasilla, Alaska, and charged with illegally shipping sodium metal, a potentially flammable ma-terial, without proper pack-aging or labeling. He told federal authorities he had been in Idaho work-ing to develop a better hy-drogen fuel cell but had run out of money. He had moved some sodium and other chemicals to a storage site near his workshop in Salmon, Idaho, before trav-eling back to his hometown of Wasilla to raise money by gold-mining. Mr. Evertson said he be-lieved he had shipped the sodium legally. A jury ac-quitted him in January 2006. However, Idaho prosecu-tors, using information Mr. Evertson provided to feder-al authorities in Alaska,
charged him with violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a 1976 federal law that regulates handling of toxic waste. The government contended Mr. Evertson had told fed-eral investigators he had abandoned the chemicals. It also said the landlord of the Idaho storage site claimed he was owed back rent and couldn't find the inventor—allegations Mr. Evertson disputed. Once the government deemed the chemicals "abandoned," they became "waste" and subject to RCRA. He was charged under a separate federal law with illegally moving the chemicals about a half-mile to the storage site. "If I had abandoned the chemicals, why would I have told the investigators about them?" said Mr. Evertson in an interview. He added that he spent $100,000 on the material and always planned to re-sume his experiments. Prosecutors emphasized the potential danger of hav-ing left the materials for two years. "You clean up after yourself and don't leave messes for others," one prosecutor told the ju-ry, which convicted Mr. Evertson on three felony counts. Prosecutors said clean-up of the site cost the government $400,000. Mr. Evertson, 57, remains on probation, working as night watchman in Idaho. In a statement, Ms. Olson, the Idaho U.S. Attorney, said that by leaving danger-ous chemicals not properly attended he endangered others and caused the gov-ernment to spend more than $400,000 in clean-up costs. "This office will continue to aggressively prosecute" environmental crimes, she said. Critics contend that feder-al criminal law is increas-ingly, and unconstitutional-ly, impinging on the sover-eignty of the states. The
question recently came be-fore the Supreme Court in the case of Carol Bond, a Pennsylvania woman who is fighting a six-year prison sentence arising out of vio-lating a 1998 federal chem-ical-weapons law tied to an international arms-control treaty. The law makes it a crime for an average citizen to possess a "chemical weapon" for other than a "peaceful purpose." The statute defines such a weap-on as any chemical that could harm humans or ani-mals. Ms. Bond's criminal case stemmed from having spread some chemicals, in-cluding an arsenic-based one, on the car, front-door handle and mailbox of a woman who had had an affair with her husband. The victim suffered a burn on her thumb. In court filings, Ms. Bond's attorneys argued the chemical-weapons law un-constitutionally intruded into what should have been a state criminal matter. The state didn't file charges on the chemicals, but under state law she likely would have gotten a less harsh sentence, her attorneys said. Recently, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled Ms. Bond has standing to challenge the federal law. By distributing jurisdiction among federal and state governments, the Constitu-tion "protects the liberty of the individual from arbi-trary power," Justice An-thony Kennedy wrote for the court. "When govern-ment acts in excess of its lawful powers, that liberty is at stake." Justice Samuel Alito also expressed concern about the law's "breadth" by lay-ing out a hypothetical ex-ample. Simply pouring a bottle of vinegar into a bowl to kill someone's goldfish, Justice Alito said, could be "potentially pun-ishable by life imprison-ment."
More Are Ensnared, continued
Texas Man Can't Clear his Name by Steven Brownstein
A Frisco, TX man has been unable to clear his name for over four years. An appeals court has de-cided he has no right to seek equitable justice after a local judge found for the defendant. Though he has never been found guilty of any crime, he is shackled with a record he is unable to clear. The District Attorney had dismissed the charges after the State admitted it could not obtain a guilty plea, telling the court that, “it has been determined that the
State is unable to make a prima facia case.” The District Attorney's Office also argued that the complainant has never re-canted her testimony, there-fore the case should not be expunged. The local judge disagreed but has been overruled by the Texas apellate court. His record remains. And a job, forget about it.
Rape Victim Gets Expelled From School by Steven Brownstein
A Missouri school district
has been accussed in a fed-eral lawsuit that they failed to protect a middle-school girl from being raped, say-ing the girl "neglected to use reasonable means to protect herself." The 7th grade special edu-cation female student, was raped twice during the course of two school years, according to the lawsuit. The school told the moth-er that they thought that her daughter made it all up. Then she was suspended from school for "disrespectful conduct" and "public display of affec-tion," finally being ex-pelled. Since then, a boy pleaded
guilty in juvenile court to unspecified charges (sealed) after the girl was raped a second time.
The school calls the girl's charges 'frivoluous."
Interesting Chemistry - Arranged Marriages And Background Checks Arranged marriages contin-ue to be a popular tradition in India, with a majority of men and women between the ages of 17 and 25 in major metros such as New Delhi and Mumbai approv-ing of them. The way these marriages get arranged, however, in the fast-changing urban centres is changing with the times. In the past, parents or rela-tives searched their own social networks for suitable prospects. Today, family members and prospective brides and grooms browse matrimonial Web sites, which offer a convenient alternative to the traditional matrimonial sections in newspapers. As people who meet online know little about each oth-er, the anonymity offers huge potential for fraud and deception. So people are now hiring detectives to check out the prospective brides and grooms and the requests for their services have steadily risen in the last few years. The most common requests are relat-ed to finances and past rela-tionships. “The number has almost doubled in the last two years,” says Sanjay Singh, CEO of the New Delhi-based Indian Detec-tive Agency. “Earlier it was just high-profile and very rich families that were en-gaging our services. But now, it's mostly the middle class.” The number of premarital investigations, say detec-tives, is higher in arranged marriages, as opposed to love marriages. The total registration base of India's biggest online matrimonial portal, Shaadi.com, was 91 lakh in 2007 and the site reported that 7.2 lakh mar-
riages were enabled by it. Registration on Bha-ratmatrimony.com is close to 90 lakh. “It is necessary to get some kind of check done on a partner before marriage,” says Prashant Rana, Mar-keting Manager, Fireball Investigation Services. “But people don't have that kind of time or resources to do a thorough check.” New Delhi has over a hun-dred registered detective agencies and thousands of smaller one-man shows. The Indian Detective Agen-cy alone receives at least 30 inquiries a week for pre-marital investigations. Investigations typically take between a week and 10 days, and can cost up to approximately Rs 56,000, depending on the company and the depth of the investi-gation. Families or prospec-tive brides or grooms often hire them for the first part of the screening process, when personal finances and character are the most im-portant considerations. Considering that families now spend several lakhs on a wedding, the cost for a seven-day investigation is-n't considered too big an expense. Investigations are very discreet; only the par-ents are usually privy to the results, hence there is no shame or taboo if some-
thing negative turns up. Even if it's all positive, the fact that an investigation was undertaken is not men-tioned to anyone. “It's a sensitive issue,” says Singh. “If your prospective spouse finds out you've been sending detectives after him, he's not going to like it. Simple.” Investigators provide de-tails about previous and present relationships, edu-cation, career, financial po-sition and the family. Expe-rienced investigators, pre-tending to be on some other mission, get inside the house, talk to the family and try to establish what kind of people they are, how they treat others and, most important, how they treat one another. In order to do this, detectives follow their subject's every move. A team monitors their tar-get for 7-10 days, dressing up as rikshaw-wallahs, bouncers at a night-club or, as Rana says, even a clean-er in their doctor's office. “Its human nature that within seven days, you'll repeat every habit,” says Rana. “If I have a girl-friend, once a week, I'll go see her. If I drink, I'll do it at least once a week. If I enjoy partying, again, I'll do it at some point during the week. That's why we do our surveillance for seven days. Within that time, we make the report.” “Just like
in the movies,” he adds. Women clients Of the hundreds of cases that come to him each month, Rana says 80 per cent are women or their parents who want future spouses investigated. As women are often re-quired to live with their husband's family after mar-riage, some consider it es-sential to know as much as they can about the family they'll be spending the rest of their life with. Men, on the other hand, are only concerned about past relationships. If the investigation turns out well, the woman and her parents take things for-ward. If it does not, there is rarely a confrontation, de-tectives say. Matches can be blown when major obstacles re-surface from the past, or sometimes for small trans-gressions, such as lying about a smoking habit. And since the intended are not romantically involved, the parties cut their losses and move on. Ankita Kohli, 23, a single advertising professional, disapproves of the trend. “You're starting the rela-tionship by questioning his
very identity and then keep-ing it from him,” she says. “Because it's a matter of life, take control and do the investigation yourself. There are so many ways of finding the truth about a person; why trust a second-hand source and risk your relationship in the pro-cess?” Of the investigations under-taken by Fireball, Rana says about 40 per cent of the people they've scruti-nised have been “very dis-honest” about their life and work. One such case involved a man whose mother was cer-tain that the intended fian-cée was not honest about her background and hired Rana's company to verify. The investigation threw up a previous marriage and a son; the woman's husband had left her and fled to Iraq. “If the marriage had hap-pened, it would have been a big problem for that fami-ly,” says Rana. “But the mother opted for verification, and they were saved.”
Morris County,TX Court Cases Accessible Online Morris County has joined a growing consortium of
counties to display court information on the Internet. Both Morris County Clerk Vicki Falls and District Clerk Gwen Oney an-nounced the inclusion of court case information from Morris County and District Courts in an Internet data-base at www.idocket.com.
Currently, 55 counties and 81 county and district clerks across the State of Texas participate in iDock-et.com’s online database including other east Texas counties such as Dallas, McLennan, Cherokee, Na-varro, and Montgomery to name just a few. IDock-
et.com is adding other counties to its database on a regular basis. Both clerks state they are excited to offer this new service to the attorneys who practice in the county and state courts of Morris County. This service will
also benefit other individu-als and entries that require and can use easy access to court case information, such as bail bondsmen and of course, the general pub-lic. The clerks agree this service increases court-house access 24/7/365, providing constituents bet-ter service, less customer traffic, leading both offices being moré efficient, and saving tax payer dollars.
And Portage County, WI Completes Wisconsin This fall, Portage County, Wisconsin will join the statewide case management and record system, making it the final county to do so. After joining an agree-ment this week with the system's bank, the county is on pace to join the Consoli-dated Court Automation Programs in October, clerk of courts Bernadette Flatoff said. The system has been in place since 1987. The county decided to join because so many counties and state agencies use it to share documents, track cas-es and publicize records. Wood County joined in 1999, and Marathon Coun-ty in 1991. Until now, only probate cases in Portage County could be viewed on the county's website. After the switch, the county's court history and database will be available. The online court record application, known as Wis-consin Circuit Court Ac-cess, "receives between two and three million requests a day," A. John Voekler, the state's director of state courts, wrote in a blog post. "To say the clientele of CCAP is diverse is an un-derstatement."
California Consumer Credit Employment Bill Clears Committee A bill that would prevent California employers from using consumer credit re-ports to screen and evaluate potential employees has passed a key state Senate committee. Assembly Bill 22 would ban the use of credit reports in hiring decisions unless the position is a manage-ment one and that the infor-mation in the credit reports is substantially job related. It passed the Senate Ap-
propriations Committee with six Democrats sup-porting it and two Republi-cans voting against. Opponents have claimed the reports provide solid background information on a job candidate, while ex-isting law already provides safeguards against abuse by requiring employers to no-tify existing and potential employees that they’re seeking credit report infor-mation and requiring them to provide a copy of the report. Supporters have said it’s an unnecessary intrusion. The bill will next be con-sidered by the full Senate.
Straightline Reminder - Puerto Rico Sex Offender Check A little known fact has been that Straightline Inter-national has always been searching sex offender lists in Puertto Rico.
Straightline can help deci-pher and identify those found on the system. You can use their service to enhance your product. Call Dennis Brownstein at 1-866-909-6678 to get started right away.
