This is a legal question for any lawyers who may be online here....?

Question

After reaching an agreement with the court involving a plea bargain from forgery down to a charge of a bad check here's what happenned.I fulfilled 11/29 unsupervised probation with no other problems.The agreement was I could go before the court for an exspungement but the court clerk won't put me on the docket without a lawyer.They tell me there are certain papers that have to be drawn up by a lawyer but I don't see why I can't act as my own counsel at this point.I can not afford another lawyer and isn't it my right to act as my own counsel?

Answer 1

Sure you can represent yourself if you know what to do. Did you try asking the lawyer who represented you? Two other possibilities: the Public Defender Service might give you the forms to use at no charge; or go online, and search for "Expungment of Court Records in (your state)" and see what you can find.

Answer 2

there are several steps involved in an expungement. Sometimes the chief judge allows his clerk to help an indigent person. If not you must fill out the court documents for filing and you must obtain copies of your arrest record to present to the court with the documents to be filed. There will be fingerprints etc involved and they will want to print you again when you are getting your records. Once the Judge signs the order, this court order must be served on the appropriate local, state and federal agencies along with information as to where to send the records. Until you obtain these records no way of verifying expungement. Think you can do all that or you need a lawyer to show you where to go and to fill out the court order of expungement and to have it served properly. Usually cheap fees for all that they have to do. It is your right to fill out the documents yourself of course. But they have to be drafted in a court acceptable manner.

Answer 3

You have a right to act as your own counsel. However, the court system has ZERO obligation to tell you what steps you need to take to accomplish that. In fact, since the clerk's personnel are NOT attorneys, it is actually illegal for them to advise you on which steps you need to take. Therefore, they will answer any question you ask of them with, "you must have an attorney", which you must, because you obviously don't know which steps to take to defend yourself in this situation.