With a teaser like that, who could resist reading more? The 2025 edition of my online guide to expunctions is now available on the School of Government’s website at https://www.sog.unc.edu/resources/microsites/relief-criminal-conviction/. It is a free resource on expunctions and other forms of relief from the consequences of a criminal conviction, such as termination of sex offender registration and monitoring. Compared to previous years, the 2024 legislative session was relatively quiet on the expunction front, but the General Assembly made some important changes, discussed briefly below and in more detail in the revised guide.

The biggest news is that, after a pause of nearly two years, automatic expunctions of dismissed charges under G.S. 15A-146(a4) have resumed. Effective July 8, 2024, revised G.S. 15A-146(a4) directs that automatic expunctions occur from 180 to 210 days after final disposition. See S.L. 2024-35 (S 565). Deferring expunction for this length of time is intended to address the logistical issues that arose initially, when automatic expunctions occurred immediately after disposition and before potentially significant aspects of the case were addressed. The Administrative Office of the Courts has implemented automatic expunctions for charges dismissed beginning January 8, 2024 (in accord with the requirement of automatic expunction 180 days after disposition, beginning July 8, 2024); and is responsible for developing a process to expunge charges that would have been automatically expunged if not for the legislative pause (which started August 1, 2022). See S.L. 2024-35 sec. 2 (S 565) (requiring this result). You can find a discussion of automatic expunctions in the section of the guide on expunction of dismissals.

In the same enactment, the General Assembly revised G.S. 15A-151.5(a) to expand electronic access by prosecutors to all expunction files maintained by the AOC. The expansion is relatively minor, as the preceding version of the statute already allowed prosecutors access to a long list of expunctions with few exceptions. The purposes for which prosecutors may use expunged convictions remains the same under G.S. 15A-151.5(b), including to calculate prior record if the person is convicted of a later offense. You can find a discussion of the potential use of expunged information, by prosecutors and others, in the section of the guide on the effect of expunction.

The guide continues to include easy-to-use (I hope) tables for each expunction and other type of relief, with the offenses eligible for relief, the preconditions for relief, and links to the applicable statutes and AOC forms. To view the table, just scroll to the bottom of the web page that you’re viewing. Here is a sample (the links are disabled in this screenshot).

If you have questions or spot errors, please feel free to get in touch with me at rubin@sog.unc.edu. You also can contact my colleague Phil Dixon, dixon@sog.unc.edu, who also knows the expunction area.

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In this brief blog I want to announce updated editions of two much lengthier resources.

One is my Guide to Relief from a Criminal Conviction, now updated to include legislation enacted by the General Assembly through the end of 2023 as well as pertinent court decisions. Each section of the guide analyzes a different form of relief from the consequences of a criminal conviction in North Carolina—for example, an expunction of a nonviolent felony or misdemeanor conviction under G.S. 15A-145.5. For each form of relief, the guide includes an easy-to-use (I hope) table identifying the offenses for which relief can be obtained, the requirements for relief, and links to the governing statutes and forms from the Administrative Office of the Courts. The guide deals at length with expunctions but also includes sections on other mechanisms for restoring rights, including newly updated sections on procedures related to sex offender registration and satellite-based monitoring. Please feel free to contact me with questions or suggestions at rubin@sog.unc.edu. Or get in touch with my colleague Phil Dixon at dixon@sog.unc.edu, who knows many of these areas well.

The other resource is the Collateral Consequences Assessment Tool (C-CAT), a searchable database of the consequences of a criminal conviction under North Carolina law, such as potential restrictions on employment and professional licensure. If you haven’t used C-CAT or haven’t used it in a while, I encourage you to check it out. The search tools are easier to use and the search results easier to view. Type a keyword into the search function or click on a category or subcategory of interest to you (for example, childcare under employment and professional licensure). The tool returns a list of results, each of which provides information about the potential consequence (such as disqualification from a particular field of employment), the duration of the consequence, and the triggering offense. You can filter your search results further by entering more specific terms. Credit for the current version of C-CAT goes to Caitlin Little at the School of Government. Feel free to contact her at little@sog.unc.edu with questions or suggestions.

We hope you find these resources helpful in your work.

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