STATE OF NEW JERSEY v. JOSEPH SNYDER

 

NOT FOR PUBLICATION WITHOUT THE

APPROVAL OF THE APPELLATE DIVISION

SUPERIOR COURT OF NEW JERSEY

APPELLATE DIVISION

DOCKET NO. A-3238-04T53238-04T5

STATE OF NEW JERSEY,

Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.

JOSEPH SNYDER,

Defendant-Appellant.

_____________________________________________________________

 

Submitted October 25, 2005 - Decided

Before Judges R. B. Coleman and Seltzer.

On appeal from the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Monmouth County, Docket No. 80-685.

Evan F. Nappen, attorney for appellant.

Robert A. Honecker, Jr., Acting Monmouth County Prosecutor, attorney for respondent (Mark P. Stalford, Special Deputy Attorney General, of counsel and on the brief.)

PER CURIAM

Petitioner Joseph Snyder appeals from an order entered in the Law Division on February 4, 2005, which denied his petition for expungement of his May 22, 1981 conviction on two counts of burglary. We affirm.

The facts are relatively straightforward. On May 22, 1981, in Monmouth County Superior Court, petitioner was convicted on two counts of burglary in violation of N.J.S.A. 2C:18-2. On March 25, 1992, in the Montana Fourth Judicial District Court, petitioner was convicted of criminal mischief in violation of Mont. Code Ann., 45-6-101.

Petitioner contends the trial court improperly took into account his 1992 Montana criminal conviction of criminal mischief in determining that he was disqualified from an expungement of the New Jersey conviction. According to petitioner, after he completed his Montana sentence, Mont. Code Ann. 46-18-801(2) restored all his civil rights and his full citizenship and, in effect, automatically pardoned him.

Petitioner's analysis lacks merit. Mont. Code Ann. 46-18-801 provides:

(1) Conviction of an offense does not deprive the offender of a civil or constitutional right, except as provided in the Montana constitution or as specifically enumerated by the sentencing judge as a necessary condition of the sentence directed toward the objectives of rehabilitation and the protection of society. If the sentencing judge incorporates by reference in the sentencing order rules of the department of corrections or the board of pardons and parole setting conditions of probation, parole, or supervised release with which the offender is required to comply, the incorporation by reference constitutes a specific enumeration of the conditions for purposes of this section.

 
(2) Except as provided in the Montana constitution, if a person has been deprived of a civil or constitutional right by reason of conviction for an offense and the person's sentence has expired or the person has been pardoned, the person is restored to all civil rights and full citizenship, the same as if the conviction had not occurred.

The reinstatement of any civil rights or citizenship rights petitioner lost from his Montana conviction is irrelevant in the present matter. The statute did not grant petitioner a pardon with regard to his sentence. Further, expungement is neither a civil right nor a citizenship matter.

Petitioner's Montana conviction has never been eliminated or erased. Moreover, Montana's Legislature does not permit the expungement of those types of criminal offenses. See Montana v. Chesley, 322 Mont. 26, 29-30 (2004) (holding that the judiciary does not have the power to expunge a criminal conviction absent statutory authority and the defendant's "conviction remains valid and is properly included in his criminal records"). Thus, even Montana still recognizes petitioner's 1992 conviction. We see no reason for New Jersey to ignore the conviction either.

Our expungement statute limits eligibility to petitioners with only one indictment conviction and not more than two disorderly person or petty disorderly person adjudications more than ten years prior to the petition for expungement. N.J.S.A. 2C:52-2. The purpose of our expungement of records statute is provided in N.J.S.A. 2C:52-32, which states:

This chapter shall be construed with the primary objective of providing relief to the one-time offender who has led a life of rectitude and disassociated himself with unlawful activity, but not to create a system whereby periodic violators of the law or those who associate themselves with criminal activity have a regular means of expunging their police and criminal records.

Here, petitioner is disqualified since he has two separate convictions for indictable crimes. N.J.S.A. 2C:52-2.

Affirmed.

 

(continued)

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A-3238-04T5

December 12, 2005