Santiago Cora v. Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico

Summary

The Court held that a person who validly incurred a criminal conviction, completed the sentence, and obtained removal of the conviction from the criminal-record certificate has no reasonable expectation of privacy in arrest-related fingerprints and booking photographs. The governing statute authorizes return of those materials only to persons acquitted or granted a total and absolute pardon, not to persons whose conviction was administratively removed after sentence completion. The materials may therefore be retained for law-enforcement purposes, but must be maintained as a confidential file. The Court reversed the intermediate appellate judgment and dismissed the petition; the Chief Justice concurred in the result without a written opinion.