An Oregon Man Was Wrongly Imprisoned for Almost a Year Because of an Error in a DMV Database

Nicholas Chappelle spent almost a year in an Oregon prison after he was wrongfully convicted of driving with a suspended license. The reason for his incarceration? A shoddy DMV database. And the worst part is he’s not alone.

While it’s unclear just how many Oregonians have been wrongfully arrested or convicted due to errors in the database, at least 3,000 licenses have been mislabeled as indefinitely suspended. At least five wrongful arrests or convictions have been identified.

According to The Oregonian, the issue stems from an error-prone practice in the database of suspended licenses at the state’s department of Driver & Motor Vehicles Services. In Oregon, license suspensions don’t take effect until a person has completed their prison or jail sentence. In the meantime, their licenses are listed as essentially permanently suspended, recorded in the database as suspended until “12/31/9999” or “00/00/0000.” According to The Oregonian, around 3000 licenses are currently being affected.

Once a suspended license holder is released from prison or jail, the state requires them to notify the DMV that they have been released in order to start counting time toward their actual suspension. However, according to The Oregonian, prison and jail officials haven’t even been giving out the necessary forms to released inmates because they don’t know who is facing license suspensions. When these former inmates get pulled over, they are likely to be arrested for driving with a suspended license, even if the actual tenure of their suspension is over.

What results