Hiring a Criminal Record Sealing & Expungement Lawyer

One of the things that I wanted to talk about is how sometimes criminal defense overlaps into the area of having a criminal history record sealed or expunged. For example, in Florida, one of the dispositions, or outcomes of a case, can be whether or not a judge withholds adjudication of guilt or imposes an adjudication of guilt. The imposition of an adjudication of guilt means a permanent conviction on your record. So, one of the things that we endeavor to do is to make sure that our clients have a withhold of adjudication of guilt, you know, in most situations.

I'll come back to this in a second: in most situations, a withhold of adjudication of guilt allows an individual, when they finish their sentence (if it's probation), to come back after their probation is over and petition the court to have their record sealed. This means that they can truthfully answer under oath, without having to face a possible penalty of perjury, that they've never even been arrested, which is a tremendous benefit for an individual who’s made a mistake, to be able to get a criminal history off their record.

Now, while we do this for many clients, one of the things that an individual needs to know is that, let’s say they’ve been accused of a domestic violence crime or they have been accused of DUI. DUI carries a mandatory permanent conviction. So, if you’ve been convicted of DUI, there is no way to have your record sealed or expunged. The objective that we have in the representation of an individual in a DUI case is, at a minimum, to get them in a situation where they can close their case for a lower and less serious crime. Let’s say, for example, reckless driving and a withhold of adjudication, where no permanent conviction has been imposed. So, after they finish their punishment, they can come back, and they can apply to have their record sealed. After it’s been sealed for 10 years, then it can be completely physically destroyed. But neither event—whether it’s sealed or expunged—means that an individual can truthfully answer under oath that they've never been arrested, and they can deny the charge.

Now, in a domestic violence case, you can have a withhold of adjudication. However, even having a withhold of adjudication in a domestic violence case is a specifically ineligible offense. It’s excluded by statute that you cannot have a withhold of adjudication on a domestic violence case sealed or expunged. So, that is why the benefit of having us represent you is so important. We can help you put yourself in a position where the outcome of the case will allow you to have a domestic violence charge—which is so unsavory—removed from your record. You have to be careful, though, because just thinking that you have a withhold of adjudication is going to be enough to have the domestic violence charge removed is not the case. We have to work very hard to get a better outcome than having a withhold of adjudication on a domestic violence case.