[jamesbrink]

I feel this is an important subject. I to have recently become a felon as well. Finding reasonable employment after the fact is a constant de-motivating battle. I have been working the ops side of things for over 10 years for large well known companies such as Edward Jones, Yahoo, and GoDaddy. I made a series of stupid decisions within a 3 hour period while having an argument with an ex girlfriend over text messages (never any violence, threats, etc). I decided to be vindictive with her, troll her, be a dick continuously out of anger. Needless to say, I broke the law and it came down hard on me. I have never had any issues with the law in the past, and this was my only run in with the law. I was indicted on 12 charges, 8 of them felonies, further more the prosecutor claimed that there was aggravating circumstances which allows them to charge me as a repeat offender because a few of the crimes took place on multiple days (violating a court order by texting my ex girlfriend.)

Of the 12 charges I had to sign for 3 felonies to avoid going to prison over being a troll to my ex girlfriend, the worst part is if I had beat her within an inch of her life I would have been in less trouble. Unfortunately that's not my MO or in my character at all. So now I am an engineer with over 10 years of great work history with 3 felonies for Computer Tampering, Harassment, and Stalking (In AZ this is Harassment + Fear of property being damaged) charges.

I was no doubt guilty, and I don't try to minimize my crimes and stupidity, but I am highly annoyed that I will have to be judged by this over and over again long after a judge already did at sentencing.... There are companies that claim to work with people for a second chance but I personally have never seen this during my job search.

Nothing more fun than becoming a felon at 35 :/