United States v. Coloian: The Acquitted Defendant Whose Federal Record No Court Could Erase

By Attorney Joe Serpa | Georgetown University Law Center | 30 Years Massachusetts Criminal Defense

Clients ask a version of the same question every week: the case is over, I won, so when does the record disappear? For a Massachusetts case there is a real answer, with statutes and waiting periods and a petition to file. For a federal case the answer comes from a decision involving an acquitted Rhode Island attorney, and the answer is that in this circuit, no court will even hear the request. The case is United States v. Coloian, 480 F.3d 47 (1st Cir. 2007), and anyone weighing a federal charge, or comparing state and federal exposure, should know what it holds. The full framework is on the firm’s new page on expunging or sealing a federal criminal record.

An Acquittal, and Then a Motion

Artin Coloian was an attorney and a chief of staff to the mayor of Providence when a federal grand jury indicted him on bribery charges in 2001. He went to trial and, after four days, a jury acquitted him of every count. Three years later he filed a motion in the same case asking the district court to expunge the record. His argument was the one any acquitted professional would make: the indictment was public, the acquittal changed nothing about what a search returned, and the record of charges a jury rejected was damaging his ability to practice law. The district judge concluded that courts hold a narrow inherent power over their own records but found no extreme circumstances, and denied the motion.

The First Circuit Goes Further

On appeal, the First Circuit did not weigh the equities at all. It vacated the district court’s order and directed that the motion be dismissed for want of jurisdiction. Applying the Supreme Court’s limits on ancillary jurisdiction from Kokkonen v. Guardian Life Insurance Co. of America, 511 U.S. 375 (1994), the court held that a federal district court has no jurisdiction to entertain a motion to expunge a criminal record based purely on equitable grounds. The decision aligned the First Circuit with the Third, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits; the Second, Seventh, Tenth, and District of Columbia Circuits allow equitable expungement in rare cases. The geography is the point: the same motion that might at least be heard in Manhattan is dismissed without a hearing in Boston.

The opinion left standing the older, narrower line of First Circuit law. In Reyes v. Supervisor of the DEA, 834 F.2d 1093, 1098 (1st Cir. 1987), the court described equitable expungement as a narrow power used more often for records of unconstitutional convictions. A conviction that was itself invalid, or a statute that expressly provides for expungement, still supports relief. Stigma, hardship, and innocence established by a jury do not.

The Contrast with Massachusetts Practice

A defendant acquitted in the Boston Municipal Court can petition to seal the Massachusetts record under G.L. c. 276, § 100C, and under Commonwealth v. Pon, 469 Mass. 296 (2014), a judge weighs the disadvantages the record creates against the public interest in access. A defendant acquitted across the street in the United States District Court has no equivalent. The difference is not a judgment that federal records deserve more permanence; it is the absence of any statute. Massachusetts filled the gap by legislation. Congress has not, and after Coloian the federal courts of this circuit cannot fill it themselves.

What Remains

The narrow federal openings are the ones covered in the federal sections of the firm’s sealing and expungement page: the under-21 simple possession expungement of 18 U.S.C. § 3607, relief tied to an invalid conviction, a presidential pardon sought through the Office of the Pardon Attorney after the 5 year waiting period of 28 C.F.R. § 1.2, and corrections of inaccurate entries under 28 C.F.R. § 16.34. For everyone else the work is preventive: fight the record at the charging and disposition stage, keep the federal file accurate, and use the Massachusetts remedies fully, because the state side is the side the law lets you fix. How the layers interact in the cases where records do the most damage is covered on the firm’s pages on domestic violence case records and expunging a 209A or 258E order from the registry. If a record, state or federal, is standing between you and a job, a license, or a clearance, call 617.936.0201 for a free, confidential consultation.