Middletown Disorderly Conduct Charge Dismissed & Expunged/Sealed

In April of 2011, our Client was charged by the Middletown Police Department with a  disorderly conduct charge in violation of R.I.G.L. 11-45-1.  Rhode Island law broadly defines disorderly conduct to include the following:

A person commits disorderly conduct if he or she intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly:

(1) Engages in fighting or threatening, or in violent or tumultuous behavior;

(2) In a public place or near a private residence that he or she has no right to occupy, disturbs another person by making loud and unreasonable noise which under the circumstances would disturb a person of average sensibilities;

(3) Directs at another person in a public place offensive words which are likely to provoke a violent reaction on the part of the average person so addressed;

(4) Alone or with others, obstructs a highway, street, sidewalk, railway, waterway, building entrance, elevator, aisle, stairway, or hallway to which the public or a substantial group of the public has access or any other place ordinarily used for the passage of persons, vehicles, or conveyances;

(5) Engages in conduct which obstructs or interferes physically with a lawful meeting, procession, or gathering;

(6) Enters upon the property of another and for a lascivious purpose looks into an occupied dwelling or other building on the property through a window or other opening; or

(7) Who without the knowledge or consent of the individual, looks for a lascivious purpose through a window, or any other opening into an area in which another would have a reasonable expectation of privacy, including, but not limited to, a restroom, locker room, shower, changing room, dressing room, bedroom, or any other such private area, not withstanding any property rights the individual may have in the location in which the private area is located.

(8) [Deleted by P.L. 2008, ch. 183, § 1].

   (b) Any person, including a police officer, may be a complainant for the purposes of instituting action for any violation of this section.

If convicted of disorderly conduct, our Client would have faced these penalties, imprisonment for a term of not more than six (6) months, or fined not more than five hundred dollars ($500), or both.

Instead, the disorderly conduct charge against our Client was dismissed.  As a result of the dismissal, we were able to seal our client's criminal record, which is similar to an expungement, so that this unfortunate incident will not adversely affect our client's schooling and employment in the future.

Pursuant to Rhode Island General Law 12-1-12:

Any fingerprint, photograph, physical measurements, or other record of identification, heretofore or hereafter taken by or under the direction of the attorney general, the superintendent of state police, the member or members of the police department of any city or town or any other officer authorized by this chapter to take them, of a person under arrest, prior to the final conviction of the person for the offense then charged, shall be destroyed by all offices or departments having the custody or possession within sixty (60) days after there has been an acquittal, dismissal, no true bill, no information, or the person has been otherwise exonerated from the offense with which he or she is charged, and the clerk of court where the exoneration has taken place shall, consistent with § 12-1-12.1, place under seal all records of the person in the case including all records of the division of criminal identification established by § 12-1-4; provided, that the person shall not have been previously convicted of any felony offense.