Expanded Expunction Opportunities

In S.L. 2017-195 (S 445), the General Assembly made several changes to North Carolina’s expunction laws. Most importantly, the act expands the availability of relief in two ways: it reduces the waiting period to expunge older nonviolent felony and misdemeanor convictions, and it allows a person to obtain an expunction of a dismissal regardless of whether the person received any prior expunctions. Because the act states that it applies to petitions filed on or after December 1, 2017, the revised statutes apply to offenses, charges, and convictions that occur before, on, or after December 1, 2017. The tradeoff for this expansion is that information about expunctions, maintained by the Administrative Office of the Courts and otherwise confidential, is available for review by the prosecutor and useable to calculate prior record level at sentencing if the person is convicted of a subsequent offense. This part of the act applies to expunctions granted on or after July 1, 2018. The act makes other changes to create more consistency and uniformity in the expunction process. Reduction of waiting period. G.S. 15A-145.5 has allowed a person to expunge older felony and misdemeanor convictions if the offense was nonviolent as defined in the statute, 15 years have elapsed, and person satisfies the other statutory conditions. The act amends G.S. 15A-145.5(c) to reduce the 15-year waiting period to 10 years for nonviolent felonies and to 5 years for nonviolent misdemeanors. The remaining criteria for an expunction remain the same. The act does not clarify an ambiguity about [...]