If You Have Felonies This Will Not Apply to You
Video Transcribed: Do You Qualify for Misdemeanor Expungement in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa Criminal Defense Attorney James Wirth and we’re about to talk about what it takes to qualify to get your misdemeanor sealed and expunged. All right. So first off we’re talking about misdemeanors, not felonies.
So if you have any felonies on your record or if you have any pending cases, this is not going to be applicable to you. You want to look for a different video. So, there’s multiple grounds to get a misdemeanor expunged. Expungement law in Oklahoma is relatively simple. Most of it is all included within one statute. It’s Title 22, Section 18, and then, there’s multiple subsections there that apply to misdemeanors.
So the first one applicable to misdemeanors is Subsection 5. And that’s what talks about there is if you are arrested for an offense, but the prosecutor declines charges, or for whatever reason, charges are not filed against you so you’re arrested, but no formal charges are filed.
Under those circumstances, once the statute of limitation has passed, or if you can get the prosecutor to acknowledge that they’ve declined charges and aren’t going to refile them, then from that point, it’s eligible for complete Section 18 expungement, which seals the court case, expunge the court case and the arrest record as well. That gets updated to OSBI and it kind of filters down from there, so it’s your complete expungement.
All right. So the next opportunity for a misdemeanor that may fall into to get it expunged is under Subsection 7. And that deals with where you’re arrested or maybe you’re not arrested, but charges are ultimately filed against you, but they are dismissed. Without entering into any kind of a plea deal or anything, they’re just dismissed.
So in that case, once the statute of limitations to refile has passed, or if the state or prosecutor indicates they’re not going to refile from that point, it is eligible for a complete Section 18 expungement. So either the statute of limitations has to pass, which for most misdemeanors is a three-year statute of limitations, or if it hasn’t passed yet and the prosecutor acknowledges they’re not going to refile, you can get that expunged at that point.
The next subsection we’re dealing with, Title 22, Section 18, Subsection 8. That regards a deferred sentence. So if you are charged with a crime, you enter into a plea deal that puts you on a deferred sentence and you successfully complete that deferred sentence, at your review when you successfully complete it, then the charge is dismissed, you’re allowed to withdraw your plea and the court cases expunged. That’s your deferred sentence expungement.
But what a lot of people don’t know is even after you get that deferred sentence expungement, it still shows on your arrest record with OSBI, so it can still cause you problems. Well, what Section 18, Subsection 8 tells us is that once one year has passed since the deferred sentence expungement, you can get a Section 18 expungement and clean up your arrest record.
All right, the next one on the list, if you don’t fall into those categories, maybe you fall under this category, Subsection 10 of Title 22, Section 18. And that regards, if you get a misdemeanor and you pay a fine on it of less than $501 and there’s no prison time or jail time, there’s no supervision or probation, if it’s just a fine of under $501 and you don’t have those other things, then it’s eligible for immediate expungement once you pay that fine. You can get it expunged right away.
All right, the next subsection the most serious type. That’s where you actually have a conviction with either jail time, a fine above $501, or you’re on probation, a suspended sentence for a period of time, that’s Subsection 11 of Title 22, Section 18. And under those circumstances, you have to wait five years, and it’s five years since the end of your last misdemeanor sentence.
So if you’ve had multiple misdemeanors, it doesn’t even matter how many, you could have a hundred misdemeanors, as long as you don’t have any felonies, you don’t have any pending cases and your last misdemeanor sentence ended five years ago, that’s eligible for complete expungement under Section 18.
When you have a lot of different types of offenses and how they fit together, sometimes you have to do them in a different order to get them expunged, to be eligible, you got to do one before the other. On multiple counties, it can get complicated.
So if you have questions regarding your specific circumstances, contact an attorney. If you want to talk to me, you can go to makelaweasy.com and I can see if I can help you out with it. Again, that’s makelaweasy.com.
