Albert H. Carter v. Ray Hardy, District Clerk of Harris County, Texas

Appellant Carter again sues under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking expungement of records of his 1963 and 1965 Texas bad-check convictions. See Carter v. Hardy, 526 F.2d 314 (5th Cir. 1976). In the first suit he claimed that the convictions should be held constitutionally invalid because, he alleged, he had been indigent at the time of trial and had been denied counsel. We affirmed dismissal of the complaint on the ground that Carter had not alleged exceptional circumstances sufficient to invoke the court’s “exceedingly narrow scope” of power to order expunction of state conviction records, relying…