In Fairfax County, Virginia, a man named Abdul Jalloh stands accused of murdering a single mother. Under a new state law, criminal records like the ones that might have warned her community about dangerous individuals can now be sealed from public view.
The law is called the Clean Slate Act. The name sounds like rehabilitation. The mechanism is something else entirely.
Sean Kennedy, president of Virginians for Safe Communities, laid out the problem in terms that leave no room for spin: "It does not allow judge review. If the prosecutor petitions for this and agrees to a sealing, the judge must. It is a shall, not a may."
Read that structure carefully. A prosecutor — a political actor, elected by voters, subject to political incentives — petitions to seal a record. The judge, whose entire job is to weigh evidence and exercise discretion, is stripped of the power to say no. The word in the statute is "shall." Not "may consider." Not "may grant upon review." Shall.
Virginia Democrats built a system where the person who decides whether your neighbor's criminal history stays visible is the same person who runs for office on conviction rates and plea deals. Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano — the same progressive prosecutor who has drawn scrutiny for his approach to violent crime — now operates in a system where sealing records requires no independent judicial check.
The law covers more than minor offenses. As reported by WJLA, a sexual assault case in Virginia has already been sealed under the new provisions. Not a decades-old misdemeanor. A sexual assault case. Hidden from public access because a prosecutor agreed to it and a judge was legally required to rubber-stamp it.
The standard defense of record-sealing laws is that people who have served their time deserve a second chance at employment and housing. That argument assumes judicial review — a judge weighing the severity of the offense, the time elapsed, the risk to the community. Virginia's Clean Slate Act removed the judge from the equation. The "second chance" framing requires a safeguard that this law specifically eliminated.
The Gateway Pundit reported on the legislation November 9. The timing matters because this isn't a bill sitting in committee or a proposal being debated. It's law. It's operational. Records are being sealed right now, and the public has no mechanism to challenge individual sealing decisions because the statute doesn't provide one.
Virginia didn't just make it easier for people with records to move on. It made it illegal for a judge to stop a prosecutor from hiding a criminal's past.
The word in the law is "shall."
