You can tell from the “help wanted” signs you keep seeing at local businesses and from the numerous postings on classified sites that there are more available jobs in southwestern Virginia than there are people to work at them. You have applied to plenty of them, and yet you are still jobless. What is stopping all these employers from hiring you? Could it be the arrest from years ago, in your early 20s, when you did something that you would never be foolish enough to do now, like stealing a necklace from a department store, smoking weed at a concert, or getting in a fistfight that ended up with witnesses calling the police? Old criminal cases can follow you around for years, in some instances, for life. This means that prospective employers and landlords can treat you like a criminal even if you were never convicted, and sometimes they do, rejecting your applications for employment or housing as soon as they see your background check. For help expunging your records, even as Virginia expungement laws are in the process of changing, contact a Clintwood criminal defense lawyer.
Which Records are Eligible for Expungement?
Expungement, also known as the sealing of a criminal record, means that the record is no longer visible on background checks. The only way anyone can see the record is if a judge specifically grants permission to see it; judges will only do this for law enforcement when there is a new case pending against you and prosecutors need to know whether to charge you with a first offense or a subsequent offense or if you are applying for a law enforcement or education job.
Virginia law allows you to apply to seal two criminal records in your lifetime. Arrest records that did not result in a conviction are always eligible for expungement; this includes cases where you were eventually acquitted, where you were never formally charged with a crime, or where a judge dismissed the charges against you or prosecutors dropped the charges. Some criminal convictions eventually become eligible for expungement; this includes misdemeanors, class 5 and 6 felonies, and grand larceny, which Virginia law does not categorize either as a misdemeanor or a felony. These records become eligible for expungement seven years after you finish your sentence in the case of misdemeanors and 10 years after you finish your sentence in the case of eligible felonies.
Some Criminal Records Will Automatically Expunge Themselves
Beginning in 2025, misdemeanor arrests that did not result in a conviction will automatically disappear from the defendant’s record seven years after the case is resolved. Meanwhile, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by expunging eligible records. A criminal defense lawyer can help guide you through the process.
Contact Greg Baker, Attorneys at Law, PLLC, About Sealing Criminal Records
The lawyers at Greg Baker, Attorneys at Law, PLLC, serve the southwestern Virginia community in criminal defense cases and other areas of the law. Contact Greg Baker, Attorneys at Law, PLLC, to set up a consultation.