Recent Changes to Louisiana’s Expungement Law –

How Do You Know If You Are Eligible to Have Your Conviction Expunged

Today’s post regarding the new expungement law answers the question, “how do I know if I am eligible to have my conviction expunged?” A conviction on your criminal record can mean the denial of a hard sought job. Trust me, you don’t want to go through the experience of being told that you were denied a job because of a conviction on your criminal record.

You are eligible to have your criminal conviction expunged if:

1.    At the time of your sentencing the judge sentenced you under Article 893 (felony conviction) are Article 894 (misdemeanor conviction). After you completed your sentence, the conviction was set aside in the prosecution was dismissed under Article 893 or 894 in court.

2.    Even if when you were originally sentenced it was not under Article 893 or 894, you are still eligible to have your conviction expunged if:

a.     More than five (5) years has elapsed since the completion of your sentence if you were convicted of a misdemeanor or more than ten (10) years has elapsed since the completion of your sentence if you were convicted of a felony and you have not been convicted of any additional misdemeanor/felony offense during the 5 year or 10 year period.

However, the following misdemeanor convictions are not eligible for expungement:

1.    If it arose from circumstances involving a sex offense (LSA-R.S. 15:541).

2.    A misdemeanor conviction for domestic abuse battery which was not dismissed pursuant to article 894(B).

 A new and welcome change to the expungement law is the provision of multiple misdemeanor convictions. Under the new law, a person can have a misdemeanor expungement once every five (5) years. However, the expungement of a conviction for a DUI 1^st or 2^nd offense (misdemeanor) can occur only once every ten (10) years.

There are certain felony convictions that cannot be expunged. These are defined as “crimes of violence” and are listed in LSA-R.S. 14:2(B), which is over forty (40) in number. A sex crime against a minor is also not eligible to be expunged. A welcome change to the expungement law is the eligibility of certain drug crimes for felony expungement. Under the previous law certain felony level drug offenses were not expungement. The new law allows for the expungement of some of these offenses, as well as possession with the intent to distribute (PWIT) crimes.