Senator Steele has introduced SB 9 which would allow a person to petition a court to prohibit disclosure of certain arrest records to noncriminal organizations if the person is acquitted or the charges are dismissed without prosecution.

It is 8 a.m. on New Year’s Day as I write this, so I’m willing to bet I am misreading the text, but I have a couple of questions about the wording of the bill. First, the digest suggests that it is the intent of the bill to allow a non-disclosure order if the arrestee is not charged, but the text of the bill does not seem to address the procedure for a person who was arrested but never charged. In particular, it does not seem to indicate which court a non-charged arrestee should petition for a nondisclosure order.

Second, there seems to be a binary element to the available relief. Either a court gives an order that the petitioner’s limited criminal history information should not be released to a noncriminal justice organization or individual, or the court does not give such an order. The order does not appear to be limited to the criminal history information pertaining to the dismissed charges — as opposed to, say, unrelated criminal history information that was not within the scope of the petition.

Probably I’m being hyper-technical here since judges would presumably read this bit of common sense into the statute. But, when you’re drafting legislation, the presumption has to be that the reader is hostile to your intent and will use any ambiguity to his or her advantage.