CENTRAL ISLIP, NY – A federal judge has dismissed a petition by a Long Island man seeking to erase his 30-year-old federal bribery conviction, ruling that the court lacks jurisdiction to grant such relief.
U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert of the Eastern District of New York issued the decision in Massaro v. United States, denying pro se petitioner Joseph Massaro’s motion to expunge the record of his 1995 conviction. The ruling, filed January 22, found that federal courts have no inherent authority to expunge criminal convictions once a case has concluded, absent specific statutory authorization.
Massaro, who represented himself, asked the court to remove the record of his conviction in United States v. Massaro (No. 94-CR-880), over which Judge Denis R. Hurley presided at the time. Court records show Massaro pleaded guilty to one count of bribery of a public official under 18 U.S.C. § 201 and was sentenced to five years of probation and fined $20,050. He completed both without incident.
In his motion, Massaro argued that the decades-old conviction has caused ongoing personal and professional hardship and requested that the case be expunged or sealed. Judge Seybert, citing prior rulings in the Second Circuit, concluded that while courts have equitable power to correct unlawful convictions or sentences, they do not have continuing jurisdiction to erase records based solely on equitable or rehabilitative grounds.
Because the court determined it lacked jurisdiction to consider the request, the government was not ordered to respond.
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