{"id":1549,"date":"2019-03-20T10:03:43","date_gmt":"2019-03-20T14:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/?p=1549"},"modified":"2019-10-24T16:27:08","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T20:27:08","slug":"indy-week-expunction-article","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/indy-week-expunction-article\/","title":{"rendered":"Indy Week: Durham\u2019s Experiment to Wipe Thousands of Old Cases Off the Books Could Be a Model for Statewide Justice Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story posted on March 13, 2019 by Sarah Willets at Indy Week<\/a><\/u><\/em><\/p>\n

Linwood Thornton had just accepted<\/strong>\u00a0that he\u2019d never drive legally again.<\/p>\n

His license had been suspended since June 2, 1989. A relative used his identity and got a speeding ticket that January, he says, and he didn\u2019t know about it until he was pulled over that September, after spending three months in prison. Only then did he learn his license had been suspended for missing the court date, which he thinks occurred while he was locked up. (Court and jail records don\u2019t go back far enough to confirm all of his story.)<\/p>\n

Thornton went on with his life. He and his wife had five kids, and he started a home improvement business. But the suspension loomed over him. It limited what jobs he could take and what vehicles he could add to his business. It cost him time spent waiting for rides. And when he had no choice but to drive, he got new tickets for driving with a revoked license, which he couldn\u2019t afford to pay\u2014and three more license suspensions, a cycle that seemed insurmountable.<\/p>\n

Eventually, he gave up.<\/p>\n

So when he and his wife, Rosa Ann\u2014whose license is also suspended\u2014first heard from his brother\u2019s girlfriend about something called the Durham Expunction and Restoration program, an initiative that began in December to connect people to free legal help with license restoration, he thought it was too good to be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just thought someone was jiving. I didn\u2019t think it was real,\u201d says Thornton, a tall man with an affable twang. \u201cMe and my baby jumped up and boogied to the courthouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

On January 23, they arrived on the sixth floor of the Durham County courthouse, where DEAR shares a space with the county drug court. Five other people were in the waiting room talking about all they\u2019d lost because they couldn\u2019t legally drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll our stories are the same,\u201d Thornton said.<\/p>\n

One woman said she spent nearly $100 a week on ride-sharing services to get to work at Durham Public Schools. If she had to drive\u2014when she didn\u2019t have the money or couldn\u2019t get a ride\u2014she was too anxious to turn the radio on.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t have a license, you don\u2019t really have nothing,\u201d a man added, eliciting knowing nods. \u201cIf you don\u2019t have a license, it\u2019s like you don\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more of this story\u00a0HERE<\/a><\/u><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story posted on March 13, 2019 by Sarah Willets at Indy Week Linwood Thornton had just accepted\u00a0that he\u2019d never drive legally again. His license had been suspended since June 2, 1989. A relative used his identity and got a speeding ticket that January, he says, and he didn\u2019t know about it until he was... <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43,41],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1811,"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1549\/revisions\/1811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncprobono.org\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}