Judge rescinds order for 2 Pennsylvania newspapers to delete archives

A First Amendment flap in central Pennsylvania was resolved Wednesday when a judge said two local newspapers were no longer under court order to delete archived news articles about 41 clients of a State College lawyer seeking to have their records expunged.

The expungement orders will be revised to remove any reference to the Centre Daily Times and the Daily Collegian, the student paper at Pennsylvania State University, Centre County Judge Thomas Kistler said.

"It was never anybody's intention to restrict" the papers, he said in a telephone interview.

Acknowledging the strong protections given the news media by the First Amendment, the judge said, "I can't tell them what to do."

The controversy began last week when lawyer Joseph Amendola filed papers to clear dozens of client records. He included the newspapers on the list of agencies, such as police, that ordinarily are directed to remove information in expungements.

No one noticed - until the Centre Daily Times received copies of five of the orders last week.

Kistler said he had just learned the newspapers were listed on 36 other expungement orders sought by Amendola.

Court officials, he said, simply had not noticed that the newspapers were on the list - and moved swiftly to resolve the matter. "It was a breakdown under the rush of the system," Kistler said.

Amendola said the underlying issue remained: What is the benefit in getting a client's court record expunged if prospective employers can simply do a Google search and view archived story files from an old court case?

Amendola said he was considering filing a test case that would explore the issue "up the ladder" of the state court system for clients having trouble getting jobs years after an arrest.

"That's certainly a legitimate issue," he said after meeting Wednesday with Kistler, other county judges, and the district attorney.

He said the judges had "made it clear" that "they wouldn't go along" with any effort to order the news organizations to delete archived stories.

Bob Heisse, executive editor of the Times, said that he was pleased the judges had resolved the matter so quickly, but that he could envision similar legal challenges as more and more information became available on the Internet.

"It's going to be interesting to see what happens," Heisse said. News archives provide a historical record of facts and events - the kind of information protected by the First Amendment, he said.

Under Pennsylvania law, an expungement order generally cleanses the public record when charges are dismissed or withdrawn, or after a defendant completes a diversionary program.

An expungement does not remove all information, which typically remains available to law enforcement. It does, however, facilitate a clean background check and can allow a job applicant to leave out information about an arrest.

Robert D. Richards, a professor of First Amendment studies and founder of the Pennsylvania Center for the First Amendment at Penn State, said an abundance of case law would make it very difficult for any court to order a news organization to delete its archives.

"The precedent in this area is stacked against his client," Richards said of Amendola. "It's been that way for really more than three decades."

He said courts had held that a news organization could not be punished for publishing accurate information that was lawfully obtained.

"You cannot ask a news organization to go back and erase history," Richards said. "To me, that's just incomprehensible."

Amendola said he thought the issue deserved discussion, but perhaps not the flap that erupted as news reports began circulating in central Pennsylvania and beyond.

"I thought it would get some attention," he said, but "never this much."