HOW TO RESEARCH CRIMINAL RECORDS
Knowing how to check a person’s criminal record will enable you to check a target’s character before you or a friend or a loved one gets involved with the target on a business or personal basis. And if you find out the person is a thief, a sex offender, or a serious threat to physically harm people, you can protect other people by warning them about him or her.
These are the father and sisters of Avril Terry. (Mrs. Terry was in seclusion.) Serial rapist Emmett Hashfield raped and beheaded Avril in Warrick County, Indiana, near Evansville, in 1960, then dismembered her and threw her piece by piece into the Ohio River. I was a boy when I read about her murder. She was the first murder victim whose fate I took to heart. Avril was kidnapped while getting a present for her little sister and candles for her birthday cake. During Hashfield’s trial, their mother said the little girl had not celebrated a birthday since then. Avril’s parents took their suffering to their graves. Victims’ lives matter! (Photo from Evansville Press)
Let’s assume you want to check your target’s criminal record in your county. You’ll first need to know which courts in your county handle felony cases and which courts handle misdemeanor cases.
All states have lower courts and upper courts. Prosecutions for misdemeanors – minor crimes in which the maximum penalty is usually 12 months in a county jail – take place in the criminal portion of lower courts. Prosecutions for felonies – serious crimes in which the sentence can go from a year in a state prison to life imprisonment or execution – take place in the criminal portion of upper courts. Figure out what they call the upper and lower courts in your county by checking the county government listings on the county website or in a phone book for your county.
Once you know the names of the courts, you can start checking. Start checking in the upper court in your county for felony cases. Then go to each of the lower courts in your county to check for misdemeanor cases.
There are three steps to checking a target’s criminal record in your county. These are:
1. Find out the case numbers of all cases involving your target.
2. Using the case numbers, have court clerks pull the case files for you so you can look at the legal paper in them.
3. Copy all important or damaging info from each case file.
We’ll now go through each step in detail, using your county’s upper court as an example.
FIND OUT CRIMINAL CASE NUMBERS
The list of all the criminal cases filed in the upper court in your county is called a “criminal index” (or docket, or some other name). This list will be on the court’s computer system, on microfilm, in drawers full of index cards, or handwritten into a very heavy set of books. You will have to check this list to get case numbers for all cases involving your target.
If your county has criminal records on line, search the county court website to see if your target shows up as a defendant. Then write down all the case numbers on him or her you find. Remember, on-line records only go back so far.
If you want to see earlier arrests, or if your county court does not have criminal records on line, call the court clerks in your county courthouse and ask one of them to do a record check for the person while you wait on the phone. Or go to the courthouse and have them show you how to check the court index for your target’s criminal cases.
In each county, there is one office where an upper court criminal database or index or a docket for all upper courts in that county will be available to the public. (In almost all counties, this place is the upper criminal court clerk’s office. In a handful of huge counties which have more than one upper courthouse, this place will be the central courthouse’s upper criminal court clerk’s office.) To find out where it is, call the court clerk of the upper court whose records you want to check. The clerk’s phone number will be on the Internet or in the phone book under the upper court portion of the county government listings.
Then, go to the courthouse where the court’s criminal database or index or docket is, and look up all felony cases involving your target. Write down the target’s name, and each charge, each case number, and each case date. Remember to check under all aliases – this is especially important if your target is female because odds are she’ll have more than one last name.
Most counties have only one upper court. Some of the larger counties have two or more. Check each extra upper court as applicable.
ENSURE CASES ARE YOUR TARGET’S CASES
Use dates of birth, Social Security numbers, race, addresses, and other identifying information to weed out other people’s cases from your target’s cases.
ABC newspeople falsely implied leftist Colorado theater shooter (and Moslem convert) James Holmes was a Tea Partier because the murderer had the same name as a local Tea Partier. They went on air with a fig leaf disclaimer but noted the two still had the same name. The work of many alleged journalists is crap. Don’t you do likewise.
(Dylan Byers’ column in Politico 7/20/2012 noted ABC officials issued an apology for their leftist smear againt the Tea Partier Holmes.)
HOW TO CHECK CRIMINAL FILES
Ask the court clerk at your county’s upper courthouse to pull criminal case files for you. Follow the clerk’s instructions; give her the target’s name and each case number.
Once the clerks pull the cases for you, go through each case file to see what the case is about. This info will be in a document called a “charge document” or a “complaint sheet” or something similar. This document contains the felony charges the county’s prosecuting attorney has made against the target. Mark these pages.
Next, check all exhibit sheets, affidavits, police reports, and other supporting evidence. These documents explain exactly why your target was (or is) in hot water. They contain details of alleged crimes, schemes, conspiracies, and the like.
In the file of any such case you find, info might exist on your target’s other arrests and criminal convictions. Use this info to obtain info on these other cases. Sometimes the record lists a parole officer or probation officer. He or she will know further info on your target and might share it with you.
These documents might contain nice-to-know info. Mark any page that contains info that will come in handy.
Next, figure out the outcome of the case. Some criminal cases will be active (not decided yet). Others will have already ended in a GUILTY or a NOT GUILTY verdict, a plea-bargained sentence, a hung jury, a mistrial, or some other form of dismissal (or directed verdict) based on a technicality.
Check the verdict document for an outcome (GUILTY, NOT GUILTY, dismissed case, or hung jury) if the target went to trial. Check the sentencing document to see what punishment the target received for his crime(s) if he was found guilty. Check if the defendant appealed the case if he was found guilty. Mark the pages which show the outcome of the case, and show why the case turned out the way it did.
HAVE PHOTOCOPIES MADE OF ALL PAGES YOU’VE MARKED.
WHAT TO DO IF YOUR TARGET BEATS THE RAP
Most people assume an accused person is a guilty person. O.J. Simpson benefited from good lawyers, incompetent prosecutors, and a crew of stooges in the jury box to get off the hook for killing his former wife Nicole, but most people think he murdered her.
A dismissal at the request of the prosecutor indicates either the target was innocent and the police were wrong to arrest him, or the target was guilty but the prosecutor decided he would be unable to win a conviction. Either instance could be evidence of defective police and/or prosecutor performance in your county.
DON’T MAKE ANY STATEMENT REGARDING A PERSON’S CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES UNLESS IT IS TRUE.
For example, calling Teddy Kennedy a murderer is untrue. He didn’t plan to take Mary Jo Kopechne’s life. However, his impairment, his crappy driving, his panicky escape from the car he put in the drink, and his cowardice in leaving Mary Jo to her fate were all factors in her death. Calling Teddy Kennedy a killer or a dirtbag who committed unpunished negligent homicide would be appropriate.
Sometimes the police arrest innocent people. Sometimes prosecutors go after innocent people, and manage to get them indicted on false pretenses. If you trash the reputation of a person who was clearly unjustly accused just because you don’t like him, you’ll deserve any trouble that will come your way because of your unjust vindictiveness.
f the case paperwork indicates your target beat the rap on a technicality, or because the judge was a bleeding heart, or because the cops who handled the case were incompetent bullies, or because the prosecutor who handled the case fixed or botched the job, or because the jury was full of dummies or because they had to decide guilt or innocence on the basis of a narrowly-interpreted law, you can certainly say so as long as you cite the documents and don’t say anything that isn’t true. Reporters write such articles all the time which imply that allegedly guilty-as-sin people beat raps. Witness the accusatory articles written about people like Oliver North or the Clintons!
CHECK OUT-OF-TOWN COURTS FOR CASES
It’s possible your target could have arrests all over the state (and the country), so you’ll have to know where your target has been to perform a thorough yet legal check. Also, each county has one or more lower courts, so you’ll have to check the records of each of these courts to get a complete look at your target’s misdemeanor record in that county.
You can hire a private investigator or lawyer to run a database check on your target. You have to have a valid reason to do this. Legitimate concern, fraud prevention, and potential litigation (especially if your target has already wronged you in some way) are valid reasons. The lawyer or P.I. will brief you on the others.
If you’re pressed for money, or can’t get a lawyer’s or PI’s help, some of the quickie pay-for-address locator services you see on the Internet may be able to give you multiple addresses on your target. These services don’t have the most complete or the most accurate info, so buyer beware.
Knowing where a person has lived or worked and what aliases he or she has had over the years enables you to do a very good job of finding out his or her criminal history. Why? Most criminals commit their crimes in the areas they live in. If someone has lived in several places, this means there are several places to look.
Check to see if each county your target has lived in has criminal records on line. If a county does have these records on line, search the county court website to see if your target shows up as a defendant. Then write down all the case numbers on him or her you find. Remember, on-line records only go back so far.
To search for cases before the start date of the on-line database, or if the county does not have criminal case records on line, contact the criminal court clerks in the areas where your target has lived or worked to find out if your target has any criminal cases in the upper courts in those counties. If he or she does, you can get the case numbers from the clerks. Once you have case numbers, you can order the public records on any of your target’s criminal cases. Provide the clerks with the case numbers of the cases you are interested in, and see if they will mail you or e-mail you a list of the documents in the cases so you can choose what you need.
Go to the courthouse to view the case. Make copies of what is important in the case. Or have the clerks of the court or the workers of a courthouse records retrieval service in that town copy the case paperwork for you if a court in question is hundreds of miles away.
CHECK LOWER CRIMINAL COURTS
The procedure for checking a misdemeanor record is much the same as the procedure for checking a felony record. The only major difference is that you have to look up your target’s name at each lower court in your county to figure out his complete misdemeanor record in your county, while you only have to check the main upper court in your county to determine your target’s countywide felony record.
Why is checking your target’s misdemeanor record worth the bother?
Many misdemeanor convictions are felonies that were plea-bargained downward, or were misdemeanor cases that should have been tried as felonies.
In some states, some pretty repulsive crimes are only misdemeanors. So are many serious health, labor, environmental, and safety code violations.
For some people, any conviction of any crime (or undeserved escape from prosecution) will hurt. An adult convicted of shoplifting or passing bad checks is probably untrustworthy. A person convicted of sex crimes, even if they are “only” misdemeanors, is probably a safe bet to keep committing such crimes.
CHECK FEDERAL COURTS FOR CRIME CASES
Federal courts handle special crimes and violations of certain federal laws. A person could be a defendant in a federal criminal case if suspected of crimes like income tax evasion, espionage, perjury at a federal proceeding, racketeering, civil rights violations, obstruction of justice, taking bribes while a government official or employee, restraint of trade, firearms and explosives violations, smuggling, or interstate pimping.
Check the Internet or the phone book for the address and phone number of the U.S. District Court that covers your area. There are several of these courts in most states, and virtually every metropolitan area with a couple of hundred thousand or more people has one. Also, there are federal courts in centrally located small towns in rural areas.
Once you find the right courthouse, research cases just like you would in your county courthouse. The settings are a little more formal, but the concept is the same. Remember, an accusation of federal lawbreaking, like any other criminal accusation, tends to make most people who hear about it feel less good about the accused.
QUESTION AUTHORITIES
Those who are in the best position to know about criminals are those who arrested, jailed, or prosecuted them, or sentenced them. I have talked with prosecutors, judges, police chiefs, sheriffs, peace officers, and parole and probation officers on crimes, and usually have gotten good info from them.
Let’s say your target has moved around a lot and you have found some criminal cases against him or her. In the interests of being thorough, you can ask any of the above people if they have info on crimes the target has committed outside their jurisdiction.
Unless your target is one of these authorities or their associates, the best way to approach them is honestly. When they ask you why you want to know, tell them you are checking the target because you suspect he or she is a crook or a threat to public safety, by his or her actions. Women who contact law enforcement can in many instances can get more out of a male agent than men can. Ladies, use this to your advantage.
Likewise, some hard policewomen have given me info because they liked how I sounded over the phone. (A couple of them, a female parole officer, and many court clerks over the years have told me this outright.)
Police and sheriff’s deputies don’t usually blurt out info, but they will answer your questions if they trust your motive. Sheriffs have been very helpful to me through the decades; police chiefs have been a little more guarded. Prosecutors and judges have been less helpful, except in Appalachia and in other rural areas.
Judges in Appalachia have sensed over the decades the people depend upon them to be fair and give good advice. I have found these judges are much more accessible than most public figures in other parts of the country.
Prosecutors and lawmen are often interested about what you know about the target, as there are many ways for a target to violate parole or probation. Share with them what you can. It pays dividends.
Now for a wrap-up on what you should have learned:
Figure out where the person has lived. Some people move around a lot, others don’t.
Look in county and federal courts where the person has lived for any cases involving the person. If the county has a database for criminal records, use it. As needed, have court clerks check the target for criminal cases.
Go to the courthouse to view the case. Or have a courthouse runner service pull the record for you if a court in question is hundreds of miles away. It will cost you much more than if you did it yourself, but if the court is hundreds of miles away, the savings in travel and wages could be worth it.
See what the person was accused of and how the case ended. Sometimes a guilty person escapes justice, and sometimes an innocent person is wrongly accused. But usually someone charged with a crime is guilty of something.
Make sure records having subjects with names identical to your target are the same as your target. This saves you having to apologize to someone who is not your target who you have wrongly accused of being the same person as your target. Address, age, situation in life, other identifiers mark each suspect uniquely and can help you determine if the person whose records you are holding is the person you’re looking for.
Make copies, make copies, make copies to verify what happened. Notes are no substitutes for hard copies.
Contact the authorities as needed to find out more about the target’s criminal history.
VICTIMS’ LIVES MATTER
The dirty truth is the rich get the protection of the law. Most of us have to make do with what is left over. The poorest neighborhoods – whose innocent people need the most protection from violent crime — see little police protection. And they see even less when unethical politicians and community organizers out for personal gain instigate rioting and hatred of police. Odds are you are underpoliced and underprotected too. This means at times you will have to be your own detective. We’re all in this together.
We the people built the courthouses with the sweat of our brows. By law, if not by practice, police, prosecutors, and judges have to answer to US! If we hold their butts to the fire often enough, maybe they’ll see the light. And with our help, Ms. Justice will be served more and raped less.
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
Don’t be a victim. We can help you be your own detective.
