Wiping the slate clean

Last night, I came across an article about Mel Gibson succeeding in having his DUI arrest expunged from the record.

He can't deny it ever happened, but Mel Gibson succeeded Tuesday in getting his anti-Semitic drunken-driving incident scrubbed from his record
....Gibson, 53, was pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving in July 2006 and unleashed a tirade of profanity and religious epithets on his arresting officer, according to an arrest report. "F------ Jews," the actor stormed after he was cuffed. "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world."
...."I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable," Gibson later said in a statement. "I have battled the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse."
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/10/06/2009-10-06_judge_grants_mel_gibsons_request_to_expunge_dui_arrest_from_his_record.html#ixzz0TEB7VwNY

The following is an excerpt from article on repentance about wiping the slate clean.

"One of the great principles of teshuva is that it is not a right but a privilege, an act of mercy which defies natural law. Mesillat Yesharim puts it as follows:
According to strict justice, there should be no correction at all for a sin, for in truth, how can a man straighten that which he has made crooked, when the sin is already done? If a man murdered his neighbor ... how can this be corrected? Can he wipe out the act from existence? ... Rather, repentance is granted to sinners as an act of pure lovingkindness, so that the cancellation of the will be considered the cancellation of the act.
In other words, history is history. Even if regret itself is worthy of approval and reward, it should not have the power to erase the actual transgression. In fact, human justice embodies this very principle. Once a crime has been committed, the mere expression of regret and repentance does not suffice to protect the criminal from conviction (though it might be a mitigating factor when meting out punishment). Repentance, then, and its ability to wipe the slate clean and return a man to a state of innocence, belongs not to the realm of justice or law, but to that of mercy. God, in His infinite grace, redeems undeserving man from the results of his own actions, relying on his change of heart ("the cancellation of will") to effect a change in history ("the cancellation of the act")."
To continue reading article "Regret and redemption" by Rav Ezra Bick, click on the link below.
http://www.virtualjerusalem.com/jewish_holidays/rosh/art11.htm