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August 3, 2005 - Dirt: A Guide On How To Get Family And Friends' Traffic And Criminal Records *UPDATE The Motherload: Privacy and Public Access to State Court Records Unless you're either a lawyer or a traffic offense appeals junkie like me, you probably don't know that citizen traffic and criminal records are readily available for public display in the State of Virginia. And now that the Internet is around, it's pretty easy to not only check the status of your own records, but those of anyone else's. This guide will go through the steps on how to access this information in my home state and county (Fairfax Country, Virginia). This will work for any other county in the Virginia. Though I am not sure, I believe this information availability varies from state to state, so it may not be this easy in other states. A good way to check is to go to www.google.com and type in "state_name courts case information". The first link should bring you to a government page that should have information similar to this guide. The first step is to access the Virginia Courts Case Information page. The website URL is http://208.210.219.132/vadistrict/select.jsp but you can also get to this through the Fairfax County government page.  The next step is to select the specific county in the drop-down menu. In this case it's Fairfax County.  You will now be brought to the Fairfax County General District court case information page. You now have the option to investigate further depending on the type of court division; traffic, criminal, or civil. For our purposes, we'll select traffic. Click continue.  At the main menu of the next page, you have the option to search the traffic court case database via a name search or a case number search. If you're looking for someone else's court information, you probably don't have the case number (the case number appears on ticket citations), so you'll probably want to do a name search. You also can search cases that are active or inactive. Let's search active firstly. Let's search my records :)  Here I currently have three entries in the database. Along with the entry, you'll be able to see the type of offense and the name of the officer who issued you the ticket. In my entries, the first one is pending because I appealed the conviction at the general district court level to the circuit court level (I accidentally forgot my court appeal date so I was convicted in my absence). The second two are kind of old and should be considered inactive because they have already been finalized. Anyways, if you want more information on a particular case, just click on the hyperlinked case number.  Here you'll have more details on the case like where you live, more information on the charge, and what particular state code you violated. You'll also see the status of the case at the bottom.  Going back to the traffic case main menu, let's now select inactive cases. This is the way you can see a more complete case history. Unfortunately I'm not sure how long back they retain court case information, so it might not display the speeding ticket you got back in '85. Here you see a couple more of my entries. As you can see, I love to fight my tickets :)  If you or you suspect someone you know may have a criminal record, the process of searching through the criminal record database is very similar. As you'll see though, the same traffic offenses will show up in this database also, because I guess traffic offenses are considered criminal offenses. If you do happen to search for my inactive criminal history, check out the lady below me's offense…it's hilarious. Well I hope you enjoyed my guide about how to dig up the dirt of you and the people you know. Unfortunately, I can't provide an in-depth guide like this for you for every county in every state, but I think this should give you enough a template to figure things out yourself. Have fun, and chances are you'll be pretty surpised at the various offenses your family members and friends have committed :) |
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