Record Sealing in Massachusetts

BOSTON - Even before Manuel Jesus Rodriguez came to America in 1977, a man with a similar name and birth date had established himself as a career criminal in Massachusetts.

The law-abiding Manuel Jesus Rodriguez was born Dec. 23 and is from Guatemala. The criminal, Manuel Rodriguez Jr., was born Dec. 22 and is from Puerto Rico.

Every year in the early 1980s, Manuel Jesus, who has never been charged with a crime, would stop at the police station to run a necessary criminal history check before heading to City Hall to renew his vendor's license.

For the first two years the report came back empty. But on his third such trip he received a different response.

"They told me, 'Oh, you have many felonies, we can't approve you,'" said Manuel Jesus. "But I have no record - I told them it wasn't me."

Manuel Jesus, the upstanding worker, had been mistaken for Manuel Jr., the criminal of no relation. As a result he was entered into the state's Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) system, preventing him from renewing his vendor's license.

The CORI system catalogues the criminal histories of more than 2.8 million Massachusetts residents, using names and dates of birth. Because the system does not use unique identifiers, such as fingerprints, there is room for error like the one in Manuel Jesus' case.

"We're in the cyberspace era, we're supposed to have the best technology," said Manuel Jesus, now a caseworker at Mainspring, a housing coalition for the homeless in southeastern Massachusetts.

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