Expungement in Louisiana: Who Qualifies and What It Really Does

By Donald J. Melancon, Attorney at Law

An old arrest or conviction can follow someone for years — through job applications, apartment screenings, and professional licensing. Louisiana law provides a way to have certain records expunged. It is a genuinely useful remedy, but it is narrower than most people expect, and it is worth understanding what it does and does not do before spending money on it.

What an expungement actually does

An expungement removes the record from public access. After an expungement, the record generally should not turn up in an ordinary background check run by an employer or a landlord, and in most situations the person can lawfully say they were not convicted of that offense.

What it does not do is erase the record. The record continues to exist in a restricted form, and it remains available to a defined set of agencies — law enforcement, prosecutors, the courts, and a list of licensing boards and agencies set out by statute. If you are applying for a job in a field with its own licensing body, that board may still see it. So may certain federal and immigration authorities. This point matters enormously for non-citizens: an expungement under state law does not undo a conviction for federal immigration purposes.

Who is eligible

Eligibility depends on how the case ended and how much time has passed.

• No conviction. If the charge was refused by the district attorney, dismissed, or resolved by an acquittal, the arrest record is often eligible for expungement without a long waiting period.
• Misdemeanor conviction. Generally eligible after a waiting period — commonly five years from the completion of the sentence, including probation, parole, and payment of fines and costs — provided there have been no intervening felony convictions and no pending charges.
• Felony conviction. Generally a longer wait, commonly ten years from completion of sentence, with the same conditions about intervening convictions and pending charges.
• Diversion and set-aside dispositions. Cases that ended through a diversion program or a conviction set aside and dismissed after successful probation are often eligible sooner. This is one of the more common paths.

There are also limits on frequency — Louisiana restricts how often a person can obtain an expungement within a given period, so it is worth being strategic about which record to clear if there is more than one.

What cannot be expunged

Some offenses are excluded by statute regardless of how much time has passed. Sex offenses, offenses involving a victim who was a minor, and a range of crimes of violence generally fall outside the remedy. Certain DWI-related records have their own specific rules. Because the exclusion lists are specific and get amended, this is exactly the point to confirm the current statute against the actual charge on the record — not against how the charge is described in memory or on a background report.

The process, realistically

Expungement is a court filing, not a form you send to a website. In broad strokes it involves obtaining a certified disposition of the case, preparing the motion and required affidavits, paying filing and processing fees to the clerk, the district attorney, the sheriff, and the state, serving the agencies entitled to object, and waiting for the objection period to run before a judge signs the order. The signed order then has to reach the Louisiana Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information for the record to actually be restricted.

Expect the whole thing to take several months rather than several weeks, and expect real out-of-pocket costs in fees. Two things derail expungements more than anything else: an unpaid balance of fines and costs that means the sentence is not legally “completed,” and paperwork that identifies the case or the offense incorrectly.

Worth checking first

Before filing, it is worth pulling the actual criminal history and confirming what is on it. People are frequently wrong about how their own case ended — a charge someone remembers as dismissed was pled down, or a set-aside was never actually entered. Getting the disposition right at the start avoids paying fees for a filing that cannot succeed.

For purposes of compliance with the Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct, the attorney responsible for this content is Donald J. Melancon (105 Field Street, Belle Chasse, Louisiana 70037).