Today kicks off National Youth Justice Awareness Month so it is fitting that I am writing about a young woman who I call Mariah and her recent discovery of a juvenile criminal record. There have been three previous blog posts following her trials and tribulations already. Today, I offer what I hope is the final chapter in her journey.

We arrived at Juvenile Court around 8:50 am yesterday. Mariah’s expungement hearing was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. At around 9:30 am, an assistant state’s attorney came out to the waiting area to inform Mariah that she would have no objection to her expungement petition. She asked Mariah to mark some parts of her petition N/A. She also told her that if the judge approved her petition, it would take 60 to 90 days for the State Police to expunge the record.

About five minutes later she came back out to invite Mariah into the courtroom to see the judge. We were lucky to be assigned Judge Heaston who approved the fee waiver application and the petition itself without delay. All in all it took 3 minutes for him to do this. He directed us back to the Clerk’s office to get a certified copy of the expungement order. He told Mariah that it would take about 45 minutes and that she should keep the order in a “safe place” because the Clerk’s office would make her “jump through hoops” if she lost her copy and needed to get another one in the future.

We went to Dunkin Donuts to get some breakfast while we were waiting to get the certified copy of the expungement order from the Clerk. Once we picked that up, we left and Mariah took a deep breath and exhaled.

You will no doubt be happy to know that Mariah received a letter on Thursday saying that her license had been approved. This process was no doubt expedited by the calls that the office of financial and professional regulations received from two journalists from WBEZ and the Tribune about the matter.

Ceilings of Oppression - by Haley Miglietta - School

I will let Mariah’s own words be the final ones in this saga:

I really feel lucky. I thought this whole process would take much longer. There was poster right next to courtroom 9 that stated today’s choices are tomorrow’s consequences. It had a yellow school bus on it and it reminded me of the stupid choice I made to fight in 8th grade. I’m really seeing the consequences of my choice. It sucks that I had to go through this but I’m glad it’s over and I have my license. Hopefully I can put this all behind me and never have to deal with that incident of the past again. In 90 days this basically “never happened.” I think I can finally move forward.