Judge Creates and Issues 'Federal Certificate of Rehabilitation'

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"Should a judge care what happens, years down the road, to the defendants convicted in his courtroom?"

That's the opening sentence of an opinion piece by Jesse Wegman in The New York Times a few days ago. And although Wegman never directly answers that question in the article, it's clear by the closing paragraph that Wegman believes the response should be "Yes."

The article reports that on March 7, John Gleeson, a federal district judge in Brooklyn, took new action on a case against a woman, identified in court records only as Jane Doe, who'd been convicted in 2003 for her role in faking a car accident for the insurance payments. Back then, a jury found her guilty and Gleeson sentenced her to 15 months in prison.

At the time of her crime, Doe was a single parent of two children, earning less than $15,000 a year. She received no money from the fake accident. After her conviction, she was evicted from her apartment and her nursing license was suspended.

Since her release from prison, she has not been charged with or convicted of another crime. Because of her prison record, however, she has had great difficulty in finding gainful employment, and has found no one willing to hire her as a nurse, a job for which she is trained and otherwise qualified. Her two children, now adults, have helped to support her during periods of unemployment, as have her parents.

The woman came to Gleeson's attention again this year when she requested that her conviction be expunged from the record. She told the judge that when applying for a job, answering "Yes" to the standard question about criminal history means "you are not getting that job."

Judge Gleeson declined her request, saying that expungement wasn't appropriate in Doe's case, but in a 31-page opinion, he wrote, "If we want formerly incarcerated people to become upstanding citizens, we should not litter their paths to re-entry with stumbling blocks."

Thus, in Doe's case, Gleeson opted for forgiving over forgetting, as he put it.

"I had no intention to sentence her to the unending hardship she has endured in the job market," the judge wrote. "I have reviewed her case in painstaking detail, and I can certify that Doe has been rehabilitated. Her conviction makes her no different than any other nursing applicant. In the 12 years since she reentered society after serving her prison sentence, she has not been convicted of any other wrongdoing. She has worked diligently to obtain stable employment, albeit with only intermittent success."

The judge then said he was issuing Doe a "federal certificate of rehabilitation." Federal law does not provide for such a document, but neither does it prevent the judge from creating and issuing his own.

Two days after deciding on Doe's request, Gleeson retired from the bench, a previously planned move unrelated to her case. In marking the judge's retirement, The Wall Street Journal noted, "An advocate for alternatives to incarceration, Judge Gleeson helped create two programs in Brooklyn federal court aimed at reducing or eliminating prison time for nonviolent drug offenders and younger defendants. The programs were among the first of their kind in the federal court system and provide counseling, treatment and other services."

Gleeson's hope is that the certificate he issued to Doe -- in effect, "a voucher of good character" as Wegman called it -- will remove the conviction roadblock to her full employment.

Unlike an expungement, however, the certificate will not fully restore her civil rights, and she remains unable to vote, purchase firearms or legally be eligible for many private and government jobs.

More on this story can be found at these links:

A Federal Judge's New Model for Forgiveness. New York Times 
Judge John Gleeson Invents and Issues a 'Federal Certificate of Rehabilitation.' Sentencing Law and Policy 
John Gleeson, Prominent Brooklyn Federal Judge, to Step Down. Wall Street Journal 

Applying the News Story

Virtually none of us get through life without some things happening that leave us feeling less than good about ourselves. We look at certain situations and say, "I behaved selfishly there," or "I hurt that person and have no chance to correct it," or "I did something really wrong there," or even, "I sinned." Not all the things in our past that we feel bad about are moral transgressions, let alone criminal ones, and we may be able to chalk some of them up to lack of experience and shrug them off. Still, at least a few of them -- but probably more than that -- make us feel ashamed or bad about ourselves whenever we think about them. And we know we were in the wrong.

While there may be people whose forgiveness we'd like, ultimately, all wrongdoing is a break from the life God calls us to live. As the psalmist prayed, "Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment" (Psalm 51:4).

And read Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount, where he elevates the understanding of sin from merely breaking one of the commandments to breaking the spirit of the law. We need not kill someone; if we hate that person in our heart, we have broken the commandment. We need not commit adultery; if we lust in our heart, we have broken the commandment. (See Matthew 5:21-48.)

Thus divine forgiveness is the starting point of the Christian life, as well as the bedrock upon which discipleship is built and on which we continue to find Christ's way forward, even into eternity.

The Big Questions

1. How would you feel about working alongside someone who has a criminal conviction but who, over a substantial period since, has had a clean record? Does the crime for which the person was convicted make a difference? Should it? Why or why not? If you are responsible for hiring (or can imagine yourself in that position), how would you react if a job seeker with a criminal record presented this type of rehabilitation certificate to you?

2. How is forgiveness related to rehabilitation? How can we assess whether someone who's been convicted of a crime has been rehabilitated? Or can we? What are the risks involved?

3. What is the biblical standard for forgiveness? How are the events of Holy Week and Easter related to forgiveness?

4. Have you ever felt a need for God's forgiveness? If so, what, if anything, convinced you that God had forgiven you?

5. What do you count on as your own "voucher of good character"?

Confronting the News With Scripture and Hope
Here are some Bible verses to guide your discussion:

Psalm 25:18
Consider my affliction and my trouble, and forgive all my sins. (For context, read 25:16-18.)

If "Jane Doe" in the news story above were using the Bible to plead her case for expungement, here's a verse that would be right on target.

Questions: When have you prayed this or something equivalent? What was the outcome?

Mark 2:9-11 
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Stand up and take your mat and walk"? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins -- he said to the paralytic -- "I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home." (For context, read 2:1-12.)

This is from the gospel account of Jesus teaching in a home in Capernaum, where so many people had crowded inside that there was no more room. Even the doorway was blocked. So four men lowered their paralyzed friend on a mat down through the roof to Jesus. When Jesus saw the man, he said to him, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

Why did Jesus say that? The man was hoping for healing of his disability, not forgiveness of his sins. The answer has to be that somehow, when Jesus looked at this man, he realized that while the man needed to be healed of his paralysis, he had a greater need, which, if not taken care of, would leave him crippled in his mind even after his body was made whole.

This story shows us that Jesus possesses the ability to heal our whole person. The point surely is that we don't have to be crippled by the guilty weight of our past sins, misdeeds, mistakes, selfish actions or hurting of someone else. But it is not simply a matter of, as some self-help books suggest, "forgiving ourselves." We know what's intended by that phrase, but forgiving ourselves is an incomplete solution. Forgiveness is not the possession of the transgressor to give. If I have hurt you, you may choose to forgive me, but I can't just say, "Oh well, I forgive myself." It's not mine to give.

More realistically, we can seek forgiveness from the one we have hurt, if that person is still around, and we can turn to Jesus in faith and find God's forgiveness. There may still be a lot of collateral damage that we have to clean up with those we have hurt, insofar as we can, and there may be consequences that we must pay, but through Christ, the weight of the guilt can be gone.

Questions: Theologically speaking, what is the opposite of guilt? (Hint: It is not innocence.) What was the effect in your life of receiving God's forgiveness. What effect does it continue to have? What role has "forgiving yourself" played in your life?

Matthew 6:12 
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (For context, read 6:5-14.)

Forgiveness is one of the instructions in Christ's lesson on how to pray, as the line above from the model prayer he gave his disciples shows. The Message paraphrases the verse as "Keep us forgiven with you and forgiving others."

TWW team member Liz Antonson comments, "Giving and receiving forgiveness is an essential message component in the Good News of the kingdom of God. The Easter message delivers the powerful value and effect of forgiveness -- God to humankind. God always offers us the opportunity to turn our lives around and have a fresh start, something at which we humans do not seem to excel by ourselves.

Questions: To what extent is rehabilitation something that starts inside us? Through what means does God initiate that process? Through what means does God help us with the continuation of that process?

Romans 3:28
For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. (For context, read 3:21-31.)
James 2:18 
But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. (For context, read 2:14-26.)

Neither the word "rehabilitation" nor "rehabilitate" appears in Scripture, but the word "works" (meaning good works) does, and that implies outward actions that reflect one's inner condition. That definition is essentially what rehabilitation is about.

In Romans, Paul reminds us that God justifies us by our faith "apart from works." In James, that writer tells us that works are what show the reality of our faith.

In terms of Jane Doe's case, her word that she was a different person from when she committed her crime was not enough. But the judge looked at her works since then and concluded that she was indeed rehabilitated.

Questions: What works on your part give evidence of your faith? If you have known someone who was punished for a legal offense and served a sentence, how did you treat that person afterward? What helped you decide?

Micah 7:19
[God] will again have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. (For context, read 7:18-20.)
Hebrews 10:17
I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more. (For context, read 10:11-18).

These two verses show that God's forgiveness does include expungement.

Questions: What hope do you take from these verses? How does this help with guilt you may still feel after receiving God's forgiveness?

For Further Discussion

1. Discuss this, thinking about the nature of God and the nature of humankind: An old story tells of a man in India who sat down in the shade of an ancient banyan tree. Its roots stretched far into the swamp. Eventually he noticed a small commotion where the roots entered the water. Looking more closely, he saw that a scorpion had become hopelessly entangled in the roots. The man got up and worked his way carefully along the tops of the roots until he came to the place where the scorpion was trapped, and then reached down to free it. Each time he touched the scorpion, however, it lashed his hand with its tail, stinging him painfully. When his hand became so swollen that he could no longer close his fingers, he retreated to the trunk of the tree to wait for the swelling to go down. 
As he sat down, he saw a young man nearby laughing at him. "You're a fool," said the young man, "wasting your time trying to help a scorpion that can only do you harm." 
     The old man said, "Simply because it is in the nature of the scorpion to sting, should I give up my nature, which is to save?"

2. TWW team member Joanna Loucky-Ramsey comments, "It occurs to me that by drafting a certificate signed by himself, the judge put his own reputation and credibility on the line for this woman. I wonder how that act might have changed the woman's feelings about the judge who had also sentenced her. Did she try harder to stay on the right path because he went out on a limb for her? Was she grateful?
     "In effect, Romans 8:1 -- 'There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus' -- is a certificate of sorts from God that declares our debt paid and our record expunged."
     Since that is so, do you now feel differently about the God who also judged us and found us guilty as charged? Are you grateful to God? Do you change your attitudes and behavior because God put his own reputation and credibility on the line for you?

Responding to the News

This is a good time to accept God's forgiveness through Christ.

Prayer (From Psalm 51:1-4, 7-8)

Have mercy on me, O God,
  according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy
  blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
  and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
  and my sin is ever before me.
Against you, you alone, have I sinned,
  and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
  and blameless when you pass judgment. ...
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
  wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
  let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
Amen.