Iowa 101 Elimination

Under Iowa law, you can expunge or expunge three types of criminal records:

one. Possession of alcohol under the legal age (PAULA), which are also known as juvenile-in-possession convictions (i.e., PMI), may be expunged pursuant to Iowa Code 123.47, provided 2 years have passed from the time of conviction and you have received no new citations (not including simple moving violations) during the course of the same two-year period . In most cases, it is high school and college students who receive such convictions and need to clear them before submitting resumes for jobs, summer internships, higher education, or professional degrees. In today’s competitive marketplace, even a minor misdemeanor record can be a serious hurdle.

2. audience intoxication— that describes drinking alcohol in public, being intoxicated in the open, or simply pretending to be intoxicated in public — may be removed pursuant to Iowa Stat. 123.46 as long as 2 years have passed since the conviction and no other conviction has been received criminal convictions (not counting minor motor vehicle violations) during that same 2-year period (these are the exact same conditions for removing a PAULA in Iowa). You can receive a citation for public intoxication regardless of age. Consequently, many adults who may have pleaded guilty to a public intoxication charge while on the fence or at a wedding party, for example, wisely do whatever it takes to expunge the record before it affects their employment, credit rating, or even references.

3. deferred sentencing they are a form of judicial leniency that can be applied to a wide range of criminal offenses that are generally minor in nature. In the usual deferred trial situation, a defendant pleads guilty to the summons, but the judge defers, or waits before entering, the guilty plea and orders probation instead. Granted that all conditions of parole are met correctly, then the record can be sealed from the public record.

The Iowa Expungement Process: The Iowa criminal record expungement process is reasonably simple and can be summarized in three basic steps.

Firstis writing a legal document called a petition, or request to the judge, requesting the expungement. The petition must contain the relevant facts along with the appropriate sections of the Iowa code regarding your case.

Secondafter the petition or application has been duly drafted, must appear in the correct court (each of Iowa’s ninety-nine counties has its own courthouse) and delivered to the appropriate prosecutor’s address.

Finallyif you complete the correct submissions and meet the cancellation prerequisites, the judge rules on your request and will often grant expungement without a hearing by filing an order requiring the court clerk and necessary state agencies to expunge or seal the case record.

You have the right to handle your own cancellation or hire a lawyer. The choice is yours. Typically, the more complex the legal matter, the more you need a lawyer. Fortunately, expungements in Iowa are usually relatively simple, in other words, if you meet the requirements for expungement under Iowa code, the judge must grant your petition. All you need to do to get expunged is file the correct legal documents with the clerk of court and send them to the correct parties. With the right resources, many people can successfully file their own expungements in Iowa at a fraction of the cost of hiring an attorney.