What Cases Are Eligible to be Expunged?
Under current Georgia law, cases that did not end in a dismissal cannot be expunged or erased. In Georgia criminal cases, the consequences of a conviction or nolo plea can be devastating - even when the 'deal' offered by the prosecutor or the sentence imposed by the judge seems lenient.
Just because your case ends without a jail term, loss of your driver's license or is even disposed of without a period of supervised probation does not mean you have made it through the woods unscathed. What many people find out years down the road is that any arrest that does not end in the dismissal of your case will wind up on their permanent criminal record (meaning his/her GCIC, Georgia Criminal Information Center record).
Future employment and school prospects will likely be severely hindered by the presence of an arrest and conviction/nolo on someone's record. My office received countless inquiries a week about trying to erase or expunge a criminal charge that ended in a conviction or plea deal.
The complaint is always the same: "My past record is hurting my job search." The hard truth is, however, that cases that did not end in dismissal simply cannot be expunged or erased! The only way to protect your criminal record is to hire a lawyer to secure a disposition of your case that makes expungement a possibility - this must be done
before the case is resolved.
Moreover, not every case that will be dismissed becomes eligible for the record to be cleared or erased at a later date. The smartest approach is to have an experienced criminal defense attorney represent you before you enter into a deal you think puts you out of the woods.
To learn more about expungement and how to best protect your future, do not hesitate to contact a Lawrenceville criminal defense lawyer at my firm today.