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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand how it’s showing up on her background checks if they are just charges.

> Blau told FOX 25 Thursday that McBride will need to get her case expunged in order to clear her record moving forward.

Why would her record even need clearing if she was not convicted of anything.

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> Why would her record even need clearing if she was not convicted of anything.

Charges and arrests are recorded even without convictions, and are public records. They aren’t legally punishments (though people may make adverse decisions based on them) so they neither require conviction nor automatically disappear without one.

Interesting. That seems like a flaw in background checks. I could imagine it being useful if someone was charged a few months ago and awaiting trial, but in this case it certainly seems unfair.

She has an eeoc title 7 case unless her employers (that terminated her because of a record of charges) can say that they feared the charges directly impacted her possibilty of doing the job.

Being a current fugitive on a felony charge creates reasonable fear of direct impact on the possibility of doing any job, so that’s a pretty easy bar for the potential defendants. Now that its a record of charges that have bee dismissed it would be a different story with future potential employers, of course.

The record will show that she was charged with a felony even if she wasn't convicted.

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