Pa. man haunted by poor criminal record-keeping

Ernesto Galarza went to court twice and won.

He stood trial on a drug conspiracy charge, and a Lehigh County jury found him not guilty.

The New Jersey native then sued the officials who improperly held him on immigration charges after his arrest and changed the way local law enforcement agencies work with federal immigration authorities.

But more than eight years after he was arrested at an Allentown construction site, where police suspected his boss was selling drugs, the experience is still dragging him down.

It was by chance that Galarza, 42, of Fountain Hill, Pa., discovered the crime was still on his record.

Galarza traveled in November to Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst to meet son Sebastian, who had returned from an overseas deployment with the Marines.

After Galarza provided information for a background check to enter the base, security officials told him he had to leave because they had found a felony conviction on his record, They handed him a letter citing the 2009 drug charge, of which he had been acquitted.

"Your continued presence on this installation is detrimental to the maintenance of good order and discipline," the letter from the supervisor of the base's security forces said.

"Do you know how much of an embarrassment that was?" Galarza said, recalling that he was escorted from the base and had to wait for his son near the gate.

Although defense lawyers say that such errors are rare and that Pennsylvania's criminal history record-keeping is better than some other states', errors cost people jobs, keep them from renting homes, and bar them from volunteer opportunities.

A Morning Call investigation using state court records and inquiries with the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts and Pennsylvania State Police revealed Galarza's criminal record contained an error regarding the drug charge. State police spokesman Ryan Tarkowski said the agency researched Galarza's case and corrected his record.

State police would not say how many people had pointed out mistakes in their records, requiring the newspaper to file a Right-to-Know request, to which state police have 30 days to respond.

Galarza has pleaded guilty to misdemeanors related to drug possession, a car crash, and drunken driving since 1999, but those would not have prevented his access to the military base, a spokesman said, and Galarza knew the felony drug charge could not be held against him.

Galarza said he realized that the erroneous criminal record was likely the reason he had not been able to find work aside from temporary positions despite a resumé listing more than a decade of experience as a forklift operator and truck technician, among other jobs.

Galarza's experience highlights many of the reasons consumer advocates and lawmakers have focused on improving the accuracy of criminal records and mitigating the impact that such records can have on people who have been cleared of crimes or long ago served their sentences.

"He's not the only one. We don't have any good way of knowing how often things like that happen," said Michael Schwoyer, a former prosecutor who serves as Pennsylvania's representative in a national effort to draft legislation ensuring criminal records are accurate.

Pennsylvania's criminal record-keeping is better than many states', Schwoyer said, but there are still errors and a significant number of incomplete records. A 2014 Justice Department survey of state criminal history records found more than 280,000 partly processed or unprocessed records in Pennsylvania.

There are mechanisms for people to challenge what they believe are mistakes on their rap sheet. The state built in another safeguard, requiring companies that use criminal history information to conduct background checks for employers or others to receive monthly updates so they can remove or amend records that have changed.

That's part of the reason Pennsylvania records are more accurate, said Sharon Dietrich, a lawyer for Community Legal Services in Philadelphia who represents people who have been denied employment because of faulty criminal records.

Dietrich said that when she encounters problems with criminal records, it's usually in decades-old cases in which the details of the outcome were not recorded.

Errors also can occur when a case takes an unusual route to disposition, she said. That appears to have happened in Galarza's case.

Galarza was working at a construction job, one of three he held at the time, replacing the floors in a house in November 2008. Allentown police swept in to arrest the contractor he was working for - a Dominican immigrant suspected of dealing drugs, as he made a sale to an undercover officer - court records said.

Galarza, his boss, and two other men were charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and held in Lehigh County Jail. Federal immigration officials had Galarza held there for four days after he posted bail on the mistaken belief that he was from the Dominican Republic and in the country illegally. Galarza was born in Perth Amboy, N.J.

In a federal civil rights lawsuit filed on Galarza's behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, he received settlements from the city, county, and federal government totaling $145,000, though Galarza said he received only part of the money. He also won a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in 2014 that local law enforcement agencies are not required to hold for federal authorities people suspected of being in the country illegally.