Hi all, I need to know about the process in order to expunge a charge I had about 5 years ago. The charge was dropped in court but I am sure its still sitting on my record somewhere. In Fairfax County. Any help would be appreciated

the first thing you shouldn't do is ask a lawyer about it... yeah they know the answer and can probably file the paperwork for you in under two hours billing time but why do that? my suggestion is to log into a public bulletin board where no one has the right answer, and post your question there. also don't contact fairfax county court system. again they will point you in the right direction for the process, but then you'd have to pay three dollars for parking near the courthouse. better to post the question on a bulletin board frequented by high schoolers.

If the charge was dropped in court.....It's not on your record

hey obvious guy.

Gotta love the trolls that have nothing better to do during their lunch break. That is assuming you get breaks at Mcdonalds. You are right, frequented by high schoolers you live up to your accusations.

Bravo



Takeone: It is still on your record

Obvious, Do you even know what a message board is used for?

My friend had a criminal record and later had it expunged when she turned 21. Her parents paid a fortune to have this done by a high priced attorney. Later on my friend became a TV reporter for a station in Atlanta. Her assignment was to interview a presidential candidate. She was not nervous when they asked for her social security number so the Secret Service could do a background check on her before she talked to the presidential candidate. After all, her attorney said the charge would never turn up anywhere. Well, they gave the assignmnt to someone else and the station director was told about the criminal record. My friend was told by the attorney that she would NOT have to report this charge on any job application so she answered no to the felony question. Her boss was really mad and fired her soon after for lying about the expunged charge.

I think on some criminal background checks an expunged charge will not show up but my guess is Secret Service and other law enforcement searches WILL turn up everything. Even a juvenile record.

Trickie

if you have a record, it can be expunged, but not erased.

once you have a record, it will stay with you forever.

expunged just means it won't be counted against you,
if you do some other bad deeds in the future.

The thing with expungements is that if you are even capable of having something expunged from your CRIMINAL record, there is still a civil case out there that will forever be available to the public. The process by which one would request an expungement is a civil matter and, thus, there are civil records of the procedure.

And, if you've been charged with a crime and the charges were later dropped, there is a still a record of the charge. Often, the judge requires one to prove that the charge was clearly erroneous and that you should have never been charged in the first place, in order for him/her to grant the expungement. Merely having a charge dropped doesn't necessarily qualify.

The reason the reporter was denied the interview was because in the background check, the civil case requesting the expungement was found. The records in the civil case would contain all the information from the criminal case, too.

When a case is expunged, you do NOT have to divulge any information about the criminal case to any potential employers. However, if someone is going to do a background check on you, it is only wise to inform them that you have had a case/charge expunged from your record because they are going to find it anyway.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2007 01:44PM by Heather.

Does this apply to misdemeanor charges for juveniles, like they get charged with something, agree to go through a program and if they successfully complete that they have the charges gone?

If the arrest information was ever available on one of those "background check" sites (like instant checkmate, spokeo, lexis or this site) - is is likely that it may never really go away.

The burden will be on you, the petitioner, to notify and track all these private third party sites that deal in our data.

Sure, the courts could grant your expungement petition, and order that the record be "sealed" - but this "sealing" concept predates the photocopier (to say nothing of gigabytes of storage for $5).

The ubiquity of data means that once it's out, it's far from certain that third party background sites will abide by the court's order to seal. Furthermore, the third party data brokers are given free reign to claim individuals have no standing to sue the broker if the broker is a mere "Consumer Reporting Agency" (as opposed to a higher-tier broker like Experian who is bound by laws like FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act).

As if parent or co-worker knows the difference between an FCRA report and a Consumer Reporting Agency report...

like a condom, the important news already got out

(even if your not guilty, for years poeple will be accusing you of being accused from other states even)