OPINION
By the Court,
We are asked to determine whether NRS 179.245(5), which prohibits Nevada courts from sealing records concerning sexually based offenses, improperly impinges upon the power of the State Board of
FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
The record indicates that in 1987, law enforcement officers arrested appellant Sang Man Shin for attempted lewdness with a minor, to which he subsequently pleaded guilty. The district court sentenced him to two years imprisonment and then suspended the sentence, imposing probation. Shin successfully served his probation.
After maintaining a clean criminal record for approximately 15 years, Shin sought a pardon. Following his request, in 2002, the State Board of Pardons Commissioners (Pardons Board) granted him a pardon, restoring all of his civil rights except for the right to keep firearms. In 2006, Shin moved to have his criminal record sealed pursuant to NRS 179.245, to which the Clark County District Attorney stipulated. Thereafter, the district court granted the motion and ordered Shin’s criminal record sealed.
Upon receiving notice of the district court’s order, respondent State of Nevada, Department of Public Safety (DPS) moved to set it aside. During the district court proceedings, the DPS argued that Shin’s record had been erroneously sealed because, as a convicted sex offender, NRS 179.245(5) expressly precluded the court from sealing his record since it “relat[ed] to a conviction of a crime against a child or a sexual offense.” The district court agreed and ordered Shin’s record unsealed.
Contending that his pardon not only restored his civil rights but entitled him to his record’s expunction, Shin appealed.
DISCUSSION
On appeal, Shin principally contends that this court should follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Ex parte Garland, which stated that a Presidential pardon blots out the existence of the offender’s guilt, and thus removes all existence of a prior criminal conviction.
Standard of review
We review de novo a district court’s legal conclusions, including matters of statutory constitutionality and statutory interpretation. Douglas Disposal, Inc. v. Wee Haul, LLC,
Nevada’s constitutional and statutory scheme governing pardons and record expunction
In Nevada, the Pardons Board’s constitutional power to grant pardons and commutations of sentences is exclusive. Nev. Const, art. 5, § 14. The Nevada Constitution provides that “[t]he governor, justices of the supreme court, and attorney general, or a major part of them, of whom the governor shall be one, may . . . grant pardons, after convictions.” Id. Article 5, Section 14 of the Nevada Constitution specifically requires the Governor to be involved in the pardoning process as part of the executive function but is silent as to many of a pardon’s effects, including the availability of record ex-punction. In furtherance of this constitutional provision, NRS 213.090 states that “[a] person who is granted a full, unconditional pardon by the Board is restored to all civil rights and is relieved of all disabilities incurred upon conviction.” No other constitutional or statutory provision addresses the effects of a pardon.
The Nevada Constitution does not expressly address the expunction of criminal records. In the absence of a specific constitutional limitation to the contrary, the power to enact laws is vested in the Legislature. Nev. Const, art. 4, § 1; see Cramer v. Peavy,
In addressing the scope of the pardoning power in Nevada, we begin by examining our precedent. Because our jurisprudence does not resolve the question of whether a pardon includes the attendant right to seal a criminal record, we consider the United States Supreme Court’s precedent, caselaw from the United States Courts of Appeals, and finally, other states’ jurisprudence.
Nevada decisional law
In an 1880 decision, State of Nevada v. Foley, this court considered the scope of the pardoning power.
Following Foley, this court later indirectly considered the scope of the pardoning power in Pinana v. State,
“[a] pardon is the exercise of the sovereign’s prerogative of mercy. It completely frees the offender from the control of the state. It not only exempts him from further punishment but relieves him from all the legal disabilities resulting from his conviction. It blots out the very existence of his guilt, so that, in the eye of the law, he is thereafter as innocent as if he had never committed the offense.”
Id. at 282,
These Nevada cases accord with early U.S. Supreme Court interpretations of the federal clemency power, which, as explained below, is no longer the prevailing view of the gubernatorial pardoning power in the majority of other courts around the nation.
United States Supreme Court decisions
The definition of a pardon, as first articulated by Chief Justice Marshall in United States v. Wilson, suggested that acceptance of a pardon might imply guilt.
reaches both the punishment prescribed for the offence and the guilt of the offender; and when the pardon is full, it releases the punishment and blots out of existence the guilt, so that in the eye of the law the offender is as innocent as if he had never committed the offence. If granted before conviction, it prevents any of the penalties and disabilities consequent upon conviction from attaching; if granted after conviction, it removes the penalties and disabilities, and restores him to all his civil rights; it makes him, as it were, a new man, and gives him a new credit and capacity.
Garland,
While the U.S. Supreme Court has never expressly overruled Garland, since that decision the Court has eroded its broad articulation of the power by narrowing its scope in Angle v. Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway Co.,
[a] pardon in our days is not a private act of grace from an individual happening to possess power. It is a part of the Constitutional scheme. When granted it is the determination of the ultimate authority that the public welfare will be better served by inflicting less than what the judgment fixed.
Id. at 486; see Cook v. Freeholders of Middlesex,
United States Courts of Appeals decisions
The United States Courts of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Seventh Circuit, and the District of Columbia Circuit have not followed Garland's broad articulation of the presidential pardoning power. U.S. v. Noonan,
the great weight of authority supports] the more realistic view that a pardon, to the extent of its terms, does nothing more than to abolish all restrictions upon the liberty of the pardoned one, and upon his civil rights that follow a felony conviction and sentence.
Id. The court acknowledged that while a Texas pardon may have the effect of prohibiting the Texas courts from considering the act giving rise to the pardoned offense, the pardon could “not turn back the hand of time[;j ... the stubborn fact remains that the habit of crime was upon him.” Id.
Other courts’ authority
Lower courts have similarly taken the position that a pardon’s power does not include the ability to abrogate a conviction’s underlying guilt and have concluded that Garland’s interpretation of the power was mere dictum. For instance, the New York Court of Appeals, in People v. Brophy, held that a pardon could wipe out the legal consequences flowing from an adjudication of guilt, but concluded that Garland’s “blotting out” language was merely used as a “metaphor” to encourage support for a contentious decision in a tumultuous time in our nation’s history, when ‘ ‘passions roused by the rebellion still clouded the judgment of most citizens.”
Suppose that an alcoholic surgeon performs an operation while intoxicated. He botches the surgery. The patient dies. The surgeon is convicted of manslaughter and is sentenced to imprisonment. The President grants him a full and unconditional*108 pardon. According to Abrams, the surgeon now has the right, as a result of the pardon, to continue to operate on other patients, without any interference from the medical licensing authorities.
Id. at 10-11. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals concluded that this result would be “altogether unacceptable and even irrational.” Id. at 11. Although the pardon did away with the consequences of the conviction, “it could not and did not require the court to close its eyes to the fact that Abrams did what he did.” Id. at 7.
In Dixon v. McMullen, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas addressed whether a police academy applicant who had initially pleaded guilty to a case that was subsequently dismissed, and then received a gubernatorial pardon, could be eligible to serve as a police officer.
[t]he undisputed legal effect of a pardon is to restore the civil rights to an ex-felon (suffrage, jury service, and the chance to seek public office). However, the Governor cannot overrule the judgment of a court of law. He has no “appellate” jurisdiction. . . . Regardless of the post-judgment procedural maneuvering, a final conviction does not disappear. A pardon implies guilt. Texas Courts may forgive, but they do not forget. The fact is not obliterated and there is no “wash.” . . . Moreover, the granting of a pardon does not in any way indicate a defect in the process. It may remove some disabilities, but does not change the common-law principle that a conviction of an infamous offense is evidence of bad character.
Id. at 717-18 (internal citations omitted).
Florida imposes conditions on the eligibility of an individual seeking to expunge or seal her criminal record. The Supreme Court of Florida, in R.J.L. v. State,
After considering the split of authorities that had confronted the issue, the Florida Supreme Court initially determined that, while a pardon removes punishment and disability and restores civil rights, expunction is not a civil right. R.J.L.,
The pardon did not include expunction in this case
Based upon the reasoning expressed in Angle v. Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha Railway Co., United States v. Wilson, Burdick v. United States, and Carlesi v. New York, we conclude that the U.S. Supreme Court has sub silentio retreated from Garland’s sweeping articulation of the pardoning power.
We adopt the reasoning of these cases limiting the scope of a pardon because the rationale is consistent with Nevada’s Constitution. As we have observed, there is nothing in Nevada’s Constitution that creates a civil right to expunge a criminal record. The authorities cited are in accord: expunction is not a civil right. Based upon these well-reasoned authorities, we hereby retreat from our prior decisions in State of Nevada v. Foley,
Because we conclude that the effect of the pardon does not erase the historical fact of the conviction, we hold that there is nothing in the Nevada Constitution that creates a civil right to an expunction of the record of a criminal conviction. Additionally, we hold that the Legislature’s enactment of NRS 213.090, addressing those circumstances in which the historical fact of a criminal conviction may be expunged from public view, does not abridge the pardoning power in Article 5, Section 14 of the Nevada Constitution.
CONCLUSION
As NRS 179.245(5) regulates the expunction of a criminal record of convicted sex offenders, and as expunction is not a civil right contemplated within the scope of the constitutional pardoning power, we conclude that NRS 179.245(5) does not improperly impinge on the Pardons Board’s power. Accordingly, we hold that Shin is unable to demonstrate that the statute unconstitutionally abridges the Executive’s pardoning power pursuant to Article 5, Section 14 of the
Notes
NRS 179.245 explicitly delineates those crimes that constitute a sexual offense (including attempted lewdness with a child, of which Shin was convicted). Effective July 1, 2008, NRS 179.245 was amended to adjust where “crime against a child” is defined (NRS 179.245(7)(a)). See 2007 Nev. Stat., ch. 485, § 8, at 2751-53. The language relevant to our analysis in this opinion was not altered.
In Biddle v. Perovich, the Court did not overrule Burdick, but rather stated “the reasoning ... is not to be extended to the present case.”
