Expungement Clears Court Records

Video Transcribed:  What is a deferred sentence expungement in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa attorney James Wirth and I’m going to talk to you about deferred sentence expungements. Okay, so a deferred sentence is where you get a deal worked out with the prosecutor to where if you plead guilty, you’re put on probation for a period of time, you have to jump through some hoops and when you come back to court, the case will be dismissed and expunged. That’s called a deferred sentence.

And when you go to that review date, if you don’t have everything in compliance, there’s two things that can happen. The state or the city, whoever’s prosecuting you could file a motion to accelerate your sentencing and try to give you a different sentence, which could be in time or anything else within the range of punishment.

Or for some minor violations they might just say, “We’re not going to do that, but you’re not going to get your expungement.” Or if you fail to appear on your review date, you’re not going to get your expungement.

So if you’re in that scenario, you’re probably going to want to file for a deferred sentence expungement and a deferred sentence expungement when it’s granted, that seals the court case so that there’s no record of it with the courts.

But what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t seal or take it off the arrest record. So if somebody pulls your OSBI background check for the more comprehensive ones, it’s going to show the arrest and you’re going to get some questions during an interview with an employer or anywhere else. So it partially gets you expunged. It’s the first step. It’s not the whole thing.

But if you received a deferred sentence and you haven’t gotten your expungement, you’re going to want to do a deferred sentence expungement, and after that is done for a misdemeanor, you wait one year and you can get the Section 18 expungement. That’s the complete expungement.

Or for a felony, you got to wait five years. But don’t take my word for it based on the general information of this video. If you’ve got questions related to an expungement, you can contact someone at my office. Go to makelaweasy.com.