2021 Changes to North Carolina’s Expunction Laws

As in recent sessions, the General Assembly remained active in revising North Carolina’s expunction laws. The biggest changes came in S.L. 2021-118 (S 301), as amended by section 2.3 of S.L. 2021-167 (H 761). The legislation expanded the opportunity for a person to expunge older convictions of “nonviolent” felonies but with complex eligibility conditions. This post is a first stab at analyzing that legislation. At the end of the post are short summaries of other 2021 legislation revising North Carolina’s expunction laws. Definition of “Nonviolent” Offenses G.S. 15A-145.5 has authorized the expunction of older convictions of “nonviolent” offenses, defined as offenses that do not fall into one of several categories. The General Assembly made a seemingly simple change to these definitions, but the change requires some explanation. Under G.S. 15A-145.5(a), a “nonviolent” offense does not include a Class A through G felony or a Class A1 misdemeanor. A “nonviolent” offense also does not include one of several listed offenses, a list that has included offenses involving impaired driving as defined in G.S. 20-4.01(24a). The inclusion of impaired driving in the list of excluded offenses created an unexpected barrier in 2020, when the General Assembly expanded the relief available under G.S. 15A-145.5 by authorizing expunctions of more than one “nonviolent” misdemeanor conviction from different sessions of court. Previously, a person could only expunge multiple misdemeanor convictions from the same session of court. In making this change, the General Assembly added a provision denying expunctions of misdemeanor convictions from different sessions of court [...]