The problem, as O’Neill explained, was that these 30,000 people were treated as adults because that’s what the state law dictated at the time. But as of Dec. 1, 2019, with the Raise The Age law, anyone who is 16 and 17 years old has their criminal case heard in juvenile court first. Any convictions in juvenile court are sealed.

That, however, created a problem — you have one group of people convicted before 2019 who can’t get past their criminal record and another group of people convicted after 2019 who have their criminal record sealed because it was in juvenile court, O’Neill said.

A solution was found in a section of the Second Chance Act, which was passed in North Carolina last year and became effective on Dec. 1, 2020 — prosecutors could make a motion on behalf of defendants to have their criminal record expunged.

“To get an expungement, most people are going to need a lawyer and that’s costly,” O’Neill said. “You can’t do it by yourself.”

But once O’Neill and others noticed that section in the Second Chance Act, they saw it as an opportunity to help people, he said. O’Neill enlisted the help of Denise Hines, Forsyth County’s Clerk of Court, and worked to identify people who might qualify for expungement under the state law.

First, they looked at cases from 1975 to 1999 and identified 15,161 cases. Then, they looked at cases from 2000 to 2019 and identified 15,113. The grand total ended up being 30,274 cases.

In order to qualify, people had to be convicted of non-violent misdemeanors and low-level felonies such as shoplifting, public disturbance, larceny and drug charges. And they had to have been arrested for the crime when they were either 16 or 17 and before Dec. 1, 2019.

Convictions of violent crime or any sex crime that required registration would be ineligible.

O’Neill said it took months of work to identify the 30,000 criminal cases eligible for expungement. And without Hines’ cooperation, this wouldn’t have happened.

“This is falling in her lap and the laps of her people,” he said.

Forsyth County’s district and superior court judges also participated, signing court orders paving the way for the expungements, he said.

Those court orders were signed this week, according to O’Neill.

But there is still work to do before the expungements become official. Hines said clerks will have to locate digitized copies of criminal case files and some hard copies. Paper copies of criminal case files are destroyed after a certain period of time. Then, she said, the clerks have to remove the expunged cases from the court’s system.

O’Neill and Hines said that will take some time. But once it is done, Hines said people whose cases have been expunged will receive a notice in the mail.

O’Neill said he regularly talks to the young people he coaches in lacrosse, often inviting police officers to tell them what will happen to them on Prom Night if they get caught drinking and driving. But he also knows that young people will still make mistakes.

“But as they get older, I didn’t want them to have to carry the burden of a nonviolent crime on their back for the rest of their lives,” he said.