San Antonio City Councilman Manny Pelaez (D8), who has hinted at a mayoral run in 2025, recently spoke about an incident that — legally — never happened.
Pelaez was arrested and charged with misdemeanor theft more than a decade ago, he explained to the San Antonio Report in an interview. The charge was dismissed by the Bexar County district attorney’s office, but he knew as an attorney that the blemish would remain on his public record, so he had it expunged in 2012.
“I know how damaging that kind of stigma is on people moving forward,” said Pelaez, who explained he was interviewing for jobs at the time. “So I wasn’t going to put up with bad information on my record.”
An expunction is an important part of the criminal justice system because arrest records can prevent people from getting housing or housing assistance, employment, professional licenses and financing. In 2016, the City of San Antonio approved a “ban the box” policy that removed questions about criminal history from city job applications.
The city’s Ready to Work workforce development program covers expunction costs of participants who are going through job training and education courses.
But elected officials can face more scrutiny than typical citizens, and San Antonio’s political history is littered with instances of officials’ expunged records resurfacing during campaigns. Pelaez’s arrest highlights how difficult it is for both public figures and average citizens to get a clean slate.
Pelaez’s personal experience with the expunction process and questions from the media about the incident led to his interest in expanding assistance for “second chances,” he said.
While he’s been open over the past several years about his arrests to anyone who asks — he also was arrested in college in connection with an unpaid speeding ticket — a recent media inquiry about the expunged record inspired action, he said.
“I was approached by a reporter who was doing a story,” said Pelaez. His wife and children encouraged him to talk openly about his expunction and “figure out a way to use this life experience to benefit others.”
Pelaez and Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (D4) filed a policy consideration request on Thursday that would establish and fund a legal assistance program for residents seeking expunction, launch a citywide expunction awareness campaign and connect residents to other services they may qualify for after expunction such as housing or employment.
“Countless San Antonio residents have gone through the criminal justice system and qualify for an expungement,” Rocha Garcia stated in a news release. “A robust educational campaign will help ensure people have access and forgo unnecessary burdens that come with a record.”
District 4 Councilwoman Adriana Rocha Garcia (center) listens during City Council B Session in May. Credit: Brenda Bazán / San Antonio Report
A shopping trip
Around 9 a.m. on Nov. 23, 2011, long before his 2017 run to represent District 8 on City Council, Pelaez was shopping at the Leon Springs H-E-B, he told the San Antonio Report. It was his mother’s birthday and the day before Thanksgiving, so he was picking up flowers, food and wine for the celebrations.
Texas has strict laws regarding the sale of alcohol in grocery stores. Before 2021, alcohol couldn’t be purchased on Sundays before noon. On this particular Wednesday morning, Pelaez wanted to make sure he could purchase wine.
A cashier directed him to ask a manager, located beyond the check-out area. With his still-unpurchased groceries in hand, Pelaez said he approached the manager to ask if he could buy wine.
“Just then, I got grabbed by some dude in a leather jacket and jeans,” Pelaez said.
A loud argument ensued with the plainclothes security guard, he said.
Pelaez said he was unfairly accused of stealing — and had to wait in a back room until police arrived.
Pelaez was arrested and charged with theft of $50-$500, a Class B misdemeanor. He said he couldn’t remember whether he posted bail, but he was released that night.
A waiting period
In February 2012, three months after the incident, the case was dismissed by the district attorney’s office and the county court due to “insufficient evidence,” according to a motion to dismiss document Pelaez showed the San Antonio Report.
But that arrest would remain on his record unless it was expunged.
State law requires people to wait one year from the date of an arrest before it can be considered by a judge for expunction, so that’s what Pelaez did.
“If you’ve been wrongfully accused, this is what you do,” he said.
About three years later, Pelaez said he decided to run for City Council.
Now that Pelaez is testing the waters for a run at the mayor’s seat when Mayor Ron Nirenberg’s final term ends, the issue has resurfaced. Pelaez said he’s getting “closer and closer” to a decision on whether he’ll run.
“You give up a certain amount of your privacy [in public office] and you invite a heightened standard of scrutiny,” he said. “And that’s OK. I mean, this is the job.”
For both politicians and laypeople, expunction is supposed to mean all information about the expunged incident is deleted from the individual’s criminal record. But like most elements of the criminal justice system, it’s more complicated than that.
‘As if it never happened’
Today, if you search for Pelaez in Bexar County’s online court records system, you’ll find “No data available in table.” Officially, there are no records of his arrest or charges and the San Antonio Report could not obtain a copy of the record.
Once a record is expunged by a civil court judge, a notification goes out to several agencies that manage state and federal databases requesting deletion, said Matt Howard, director of the Bexar County district attorney’s office’s Conviction Integrity Unit.
Officials are “legally bound to not talk about [expunged records] — it’s as if it never happened, everything has been destroyed,” Howard said. And once someone gets an expunction, they also have the right to deny it ever happened.
Expunctions aren’t uncommon, but they are not granted to anyone who applies for one. Each case is unique and “is looked at individually,” Howard said. There’s no special treatment, “and that’s across the board for any of our work.”
Pursuing expunction
About 700,000 people in Bexar County have a criminal record, said Yousef Kassim, a local attorney who offers expunction services through his company, Easy Expunctions.
About half of the thousands of people who seek Easy Expunctions’ services aren’t eligible for expunction, Kassim said. Generally, only arrests and charges can be expunged, not convictions, with a few exceptions for minors.
“The people who can get their record expunged, oftentimes, it’s because they were privileged enough to be able to get an attorney to get [their charge] to a spot to where it could get dismissed.”
Kassim, whose company provides services to Ready to Work participants, estimates that less than 5% of people who qualify for expunction actually pursue it.
“Either folks aren’t aware that [expunction] is a thing, or they are aware but they don’t know whether it applies to them,” he said.
But the expunction process isn’t perfect. Sometimes reports can resurface after they were shared physically or digitally between departments, attorneys or other involved parties.
Expunction is a legal right all U.S. citizens have, but it gets more complicated when an elected official wants to remove a part of their past when voters desire transparency.
In 2019, the Express-News obtained an expunged police report of a 2009 domestic violence incident involving then-councilman and mayoral candidate Greg Brockhouse. The story was picked up by local news outlets, including the San Antonio Report, and followed for months because of the violent nature of the allegations in the police report.
Brockhouse denied the incident ever occurred and his supporters insinuated that the police report was fabricated. After he narrowly lost the election in 2019, he and his wife confirmed the incident, though they disputed that Brockhouse physically abused her.
Nico LaHood, who later became Bexar County’s district attorney, tried for years to get his 1994 arrest on a charge of selling Ecstasy expunged. A college student at the time, he pleaded no contest to the charge and received deferred adjudication, which gives people the opportunity to have the record sealed. The issue resurfaced when he ran for office in 2010.
“What we can’t control is media coverage,” Howard said, explaining how difficult it is to completely remove an arrest record that once existed. “You can’t really control what is run in papers and what’s been put on the internet — and the internet is forever.”
‘Playing Whac-A-Mole’
Pelaez’s case illustrates the challenges a person can face even if they manage to get an expunction, said Ashley Peterson, Clean Slate coordinator for the Memphis-based legal reform advocacy nonprofit Just City.
A prominent councilman and attorney’s expunged record resurfacing shows just how hard it is for the average person to move forward, Peterson said.
“Seeing that [he] was able to get an expungement in a state where the laws are pretty strict … and they’re still not able to put this behind them is frustrating,” Peterson said. “If this person can’t, then who can?”
It’s incredibly common for an “expunged” record to show up in background checks, which often use data scraped from the internet by private companies, Peterson said. “They’re storing this information and there’s no federal requirements for companies … to update their information routinely or on any regular basis,” she added.
When that happens, people in Texas are allowed to challenge a record’s accuracy and file for an error resolution through the state’s Department of Public Safety.
When those companies receive an expunction order, they have 30 days to delete any relevant information to that record, Kassim said. “Any continued possession or distribution of that information is against the law” subject to criminal and civil penalties.
In Texas, it’s a Class B misdemeanor for a “public officer or employee” to distribute or fail to “obliterate identifying portions of a record or file ordered expunged.”
Still, many people with criminal or arrest records don’t have the resources or time to challenge or otherwise investigate why an expunged record pops up on a background check, Kassim said. It’s like “playing Whac-A-Mole.”
attorney fees may cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Easy Expunctions’ service costs about $700 and notifies hundreds of private background check companies at once. But the company first offers clients a $10 service to check if a record even qualifies for expunction.
The whole expunction process is “perfectly designed to keep people stuck in this system,” Peterson said. “Then there’s an emotional [piece] as well, because this is also bringing back up some of the worst times in people’s lives.”
For Pelaez, that day in 2011 was “a very traumatic thing that happened to my family and me. It was scary and it left me angry and frustrated. …
“I was angry for a long time after that. But I’m not angry anymore.”
Still, he does not want his expunction story to be “weaponized” against him or anyone else who has the right to seek that remedy, he added.
“In my case, the system worked as it was intended to work. But for too many San Antonians, the system has failed them. I hope that my story will inspire people to reclaim their own story and to reclaim their rights and their innocence the way I did.”
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