Court-ordered expunction of criminal history records

Plain-language summary

This is Florida's court-ordered expungement statute. Expungement is the strongest remedy: the court orders your record destroyed. FDLE keeps one confidential copy, and only a court order can open it — though FDLE tells criminal justice agencies, and the employers, licensing bodies and screeners named in the exceptions below, that it exists. Every other criminal justice agency must destroy its copy, keeping at most a note that it obeyed the order. After that, you may lawfully deny the record exists, except in nine cases the statute lists: when you apply for a job with a criminal justice agency; are a defendant in a criminal case; petition to seal or expunge, then or later; apply to The Florida Bar; seek a job, license or contract with the state's agencies for children and families, health, disabilities, elders or juvenile justice, or a job with direct contact with children, the disabled or the elderly at one of their contractors or licensees; seek the same with a school, the Department of Education or a local child-care licensing body, or their contractors; seek an insurance agent's license; seek appointment as a guardian; or are screened through the Care Provider Background Screening Clearinghouse.

No court will look at your petition until FDLE issues a certificate of eligibility. The statute sets what the application takes: a certified disposition of your case — the paper that shows how it ended — a written, certified statement from the appropriate state attorney or the statewide prosecutor confirming your record qualifies, and a $75 processing fee paid to FDLE, unless FDLE's executive director waives it. FDLE's own instructions add a fingerprint card, taken by law enforcement. The certificate is not the relief itself. It says your record is the kind a court is allowed to expunge.

The eligibility test is strict. As a rule, the charge must have ended without an adjudication of guilt — dropped, dismissed, never filed, or a judge or jury found you not guilty. Your whole record counts, not only this charge: if a Florida court has ever adjudicated you guilty of a crime, you do not qualify. Neither do you if, as a juvenile, you were adjudicated delinquent for a felony or for assault, battery, assault on a law enforcement officer, firefighter or other specified officer, carrying a concealed weapon, openly carrying a weapon, a weapon or firearm at a school event or on school property, destructive devices or bombs, unlawful possession of a firearm, exposure of sexual organs, arson, petit theft, neglect of a child, or cruelty to animals — unless that juvenile record has since been expunged under section 943.0515. A record that is a conviction for an offense on the section 943.0584 list cannot be expunged, even if adjudication was withheld. You must be done with any court supervision in this case. And Florida allows one court-ordered sealing or expunction in a lifetime: if a court has sealed or expunged a record of yours before, under section 943.059, this statute or the older laws they replaced, you cannot expunge another — unless it is that same sealed record, after 10 years (below). Each order covers one arrest or incident, in one proceeding; it reaches other arrests only if they directly relate to the first and the order says so.

One path starts elsewhere. A record sealed under section 943.059 for 10 years may then qualify for expungement. Once FDLE certifies you, you petition the court. The statute says "a court of competent jurisdiction"; in practice, file in the county where your original case was filed — that court already has your case file, so it can take up the petition directly. The judge decides, and may grant or deny an eligible petition.