Legal Question in Criminal Law in Massachusetts

Are you saying you were never "arraigned" on the charge? If you were arrested, the arraignment usually comes a short time after the arrest, and it is the first court event in a criminal proceeding. If the charge was dismissed BEFORE you were arraigned, then the charge would NOT appear on your Massachusetts criminal record; if the charge was dismissed AFTER the arraignment, the charge DOES appear on your Massachusetts criminal record (albeit as a dismissal).

Regardless of whether or not you were arraigned, you state that you were arrested. If arrested, then you were fingerprinted and it is the fingerprint and arrest data that the police would send over to the FEDERAL database (to so-called "Triple I" or Interstate Identification Index) kept by the FBI.

A state-level sealing of your criminal record would have no impact on the federal FBI Triple I database, but Triple I information is generally only available to criminal justice agencies. Criminal justice agencies can use this information for law enforcement purposes; e.g. criminal investigations, bond setting, charging determinations, sentencing and criminal justice employment. Criminal records obtained through III cannot be used for licensing or employment purposes.

This leads me to ask how do you know that the FBI called the company to inform them of the charge? Perhaps the company learned of the charge through some other means, i.e. it had a background checking company do something as simple as checking the publicly accessible court records for every town where you have lived. Sealing your record would prevent this method of discovering the old charge.

It's a good idea to have your CORI sealed. Since the charge was dismissed, and it has probably cost you a job opportunity already, and may cost you more opportunities in the future, your case is a strong candidate for sealing, and the sealing petition can be filed without a waiting period.

Best of luck,

Dominic Pang (617.538.1127)