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State v. Badessa3/1/2005
as being the intent of the legislature. We read § 12-1.3-3(b)(1) as referring only to the mandatory waiting periods created in § 12-1.3-2. There, the statute requires that a person wait five years "from the date of the completion of his or her sentence" before filing a motion to expunge a misdemeanor conviction, and ten years for a felony conviction. Section 12-1.3-2(b)(c).
The requirements of § 12-1.3-2 must be strictly complied with; we have previously held that a person who prematurely files a motion for expungement before the completion of the five or ten-year waiting period lacks legal standing to file his motion, and as such, a hearing justice has no justiciable matter upon which to act. State v. Alejo, 723 A.2d 762, 765 (R.I. 1999). It is a well-recognized tenet of this Court that "when we are faced with statutory provisions that are in pari materia, we construe them in a manner that attempts to harmonize them and that is consistent with their general objective scope." State v. Dearmas, 841 A.2d 659, 666 (R.I. 2004). Therefore, we read the five and ten-year periods articulated in § 12-1.3-3(b)(1) as referring back to the mandatory waiting periods established in § 12-1.3-2, and not as creating a new requirement that only in the five or ten years preceding the expungement motion must a petitioner have a clean record. We interpret the reference to time frames in § 12-1.3-3 as clarifying the "first offender" definition found in § 12-1.3-1 to preclude individuals with any subsequent convictions from qualifying for expungement.
Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, we quash the orders of the Superior Court. The record shall be remanded to the Superior Court with our decision endorsed thereon.
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