Sealing and Expunging a Florida Criminal Record

Sealing and Expunging a Florida Criminal Record is a complex matter. Not just anyone may qualify. The law puts up many barriers. What’s the difference between sealing and expunging? Sealing, as the term implies, means closing the file from public view while expunging means actually destroying or obliterating it.

Threshold eligibility requirements to seal or expunge a criminal record:

• No “adjudication of guilt” (or delinquency in the case of a juvenile charge), meaning a conviction in the case to be sealed or expunged or any prior case as opposed to a “withhold of adjudication” meaning no conviction. This is regardless of whether the plea was “guilty” or “no contest”, which have the same effect for this area of the law.
• If there was a “withhold of adjudication”, the offense was not one greater than a third degree felony or third degree felony or misdemeanor involving any sex offense, obscenity, pornography, intentional child or elderly abuse or exploitation, or telecommunications fraud.
• No prior sealing or expunction.
• If more than one charge, that they arose from the same incident.
• Court supervision or sentence has been completed.

If the charge in question was never filed or dropped, one may seek to expunge that record immediately. If it was resolved with a plea and a “withhold”, ten years must pass before the record may be expunged.

While a sealed or expunged record generally allows a person to “lawfully deny or fail to acknowledge” the record without it being considered deceitful or an act of perjury, one still must disclose it in certain circumstances:

• An applicant for law or law enforcement related employment such as any criminal justice agency, seaport and candidates for the Florida Bar;
• An applicant for employment, licensing or contracting (and any contractor’s employee) with the Department of Children and Families, the Department of Juvenile Justice, the Department of Education or other school related entity and child care licensees - in other words, anyone “in a sensitive position having direct contact with children, the developmentally disabled, the aged, or the elderly”.

As you can see, sealing and expunging doesn’t mean closed from all eyes. Indeed, the above entities are required by law to access sealed records, adult and juvenile. Additionally, a prosecutor may reveal the prior record to the court in a subsequent prosecution.