Jameson Stone Law handles record clearing across Central Pennsylvania, and Ethan Stone leads the criminal work. Pennsylvania has two separate mechanisms for this and they do different things. Which one is available to you turns on how each case ended rather than on how much you need it gone.
Two Different Things
Expungement destroys the record. Sealing, which the statute calls an order for limited access, leaves it in existence but closes it off from public view. An employer running a background check or a landlord screening an application will not see a sealed record. Law enforcement, the courts and certain licensing bodies still will.
They run on separate statutes with separate eligibility, and the distinction is not a technicality. People arrive asking for an expungement when sealing is the only route open to them, and occasionally the reverse. Non-convictions and summary offenses can be expunged. Misdemeanor and felony convictions generally cannot, and for those the honest question is whether sealing is available instead.
What Can Be Expunged
Charges that were withdrawn, dismissed, or ended in an acquittal are the clearest candidates. So are summary convictions once five years have passed without an arrest, completed diversion programs, and offenses that have been pardoned. The petition goes to the court that heard the case, and it needs a current state police criminal history report attached, obtained within the previous sixty days.
Then the part nobody wants to hear. A misdemeanor or felony conviction cannot be expunged in Pennsylvania. The exceptions are narrow enough to be rare: reaching seventy years old with ten arrest-free years behind you, or receiving a pardon from the Governor. Any website telling you otherwise is describing a different state. Where that is your position, sealing is the conversation worth having.
Clean Slate
Pennsylvania automates a good deal of this now, and the rules changed materially in 2024. Summary convictions seal automatically after five conviction-free years. Misdemeanors carrying two years or less seal after seven, down from ten. Certain lower-level drug felonies seal after ten. The courts send monthly lists to the state police and it happens with no petition, no fee and no application from you.
Automatic is not the same as reliable, and a good deal falls outside it. Non-violent property felonies such as theft and forgery need a petition rather than sealing themselves. Restitution has to have been paid. And the only way to know whether your record actually sealed is to obtain it and look, which costs about the price of a takeaway and settles a question people are frequently wrong about.
What We Handle
Charges withdrawn, dismissed, or ending in an acquittal, which are the clearest route to full expungement.
Disorderly conduct and other low-level offenses, which become expungeable after five clear years without an arrest.
Records that do not seal automatically, including the property felonies that become eligible after ten years.
The only route to clearing a serious conviction, and a long one that rewards starting early.
Our Process
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A state police history report shows what is actually on there, which is regularly not what people remember it being.
Expungement, automatic sealing, a petition, or a pardon, each one decided by how that particular charge on the record ended.
The petition, the court order, and then confirming afterward that every single agency holding the record has actually removed it.
Most people asking about this have a specific door in front of them, usually a job, a licence, an apartment or a security clearance. What matters is not what the record deserves to be but what the statute allows, and those are different questions with different answers.
No. A DUI conviction is a misdemeanor, and misdemeanor convictions cannot be expunged in Pennsylvania short of a pardon or reaching seventy. What can be expunged is a DUI that resolved through ARD rather than a conviction, because the charges were dismissed and there was no finding of guilt. That is a meaningful difference and it is one of the strongest arguments for taking diversion when it is offered. Our ARD pages cover how that works, and if you completed ARD and never received an expungement order, that is worth looking into now. A first offense DUI conviction may also be eligible for sealing after seven conviction-free years, which is not the same as expungement but is considerably better than nothing.
Because an acquittal does not remove anything on its own. The charge, the arrest and the disposition all remain on the record until somebody petitions to have them expunged, and nothing in the system does that automatically. This surprises people more than any other part of the process, and it is the most common reason a record is still causing problems years after the case ended well. It is also among the more straightforward petitions, since the Commonwealth has little basis to resist expunging a charge it did not prove.
Filing fees vary by county and generally fall somewhere in the low hundreds, and the process typically runs four to six months from petition to order. Getting the state police history report first costs very little and it is worth doing before anything else, because it establishes what you are actually dealing with. Automatic sealing under Clean Slate costs nothing at all and requires no petition, which is why checking whether it has already happened is the sensible first step rather than paying to file something unnecessary.
Almost everyone is slightly wrong about what their record says, in one direction or the other, and every decision here depends on knowing. Getting a copy is quick and inexpensive, and it tells us which of the four routes is actually open to you. Ethan Stone leads the firm’s criminal work, and the first conversation costs nothing.