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IU McKinney’s Civil Practice Clinic has won yet another expungement for a client. The clinic, under the direction of Professor Carrie Hagan, deals extensively with this area of the law. The Indiana Court of Appeals decided the case March 9.

The case, Pranav Mishra v. State of Indiana, originates in Tippecanoe Superior Court. The overall issue involves the permissible ability to file for an early expungement with permission from a prosecutor and how that affects any other expungement proceedings for that individual. Early expungement doesn’t have a lot of case law or statutory direction and it’s a confusing question as far as how courts need to proceed, Professor Hagan said. Clinic students worked with appellant attorney Denise Turner.

“The court agreed with our main position and reversed and remanded, thus granting the expungement which is great,” Professor Hagan said. The issue of how early filing for expungement impacts other such filings was not discussed, she said.

IU McKinney students in the Civil Practice Clinic (CPC) who worked on the effort were Chandler Clark, Molly Connor, Joshua DeAmicis, Cass Lawson, Jordan Oliver, Hannah Sobhie, and Dan McMullen. McMullen wrote the bulk of the brief, Professor Hagan said.

CPC’s work in the community has a great ability to impact the community on a micro and a macro level, Professor Hagan said. “Not only are we able to help clients with brief advice and service about their standing to proceed for an expungement, but we then represent those that are eligible,” she said. “On a larger scale, we’ve been able to keep abreast of current appeals regarding expungements, and when we see one that we feel we can lend our expertise to, we do. We’ve been really pleased with how we feel we were able to represent the interests of our clients in NG v State, 19A-XP-673 (upholding the use of the date of the actual conviction as the time to calculate one’s eligibility for expungement from) and Brian Allen v. State (remanding denial of an expungement for proper consideration for that eligible expungement to be had under the law). We’re very appreciative that the courts allow us to appear as amicus, as it’s not only great for our clients, but great learning experiences for us as practitioners as well.”