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 in accordance with 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 vehicle 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 expunge them before submitting resumes for jobs, summer internships, higher education or professional degrees. In today’s competitive market, even a minor misdemeanor record can be a serious hurdle.
two. audience intoxication— describing drinking alcohol in public, being intoxicated outdoors, or simply pretending to be intoxicated in public — could be removed pursuant to Iowa Statute 123.46 as long as 2 years have passed since conviction and you have not received another criminal convictions (not counting minor motor vehicle offenses) during that same 2-year period (these are exactly the 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 nearby or at a wedding party, for example, wisely do what is necessary to clear the record before it affects their employment, credit rating or even references.
3. deferred sentences 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 citation, but the judge defers, or waits before entering, the guilty plea and orders probation instead. Granted that all conditions of probation are properly met, then the record can be sealed from the public record.
The Iowa Criminal Record Expungement Process: The process for expunging your Iowa criminal record is reasonably simple and can be boiled down to three basic steps.
First, is writing a legal document called a petition, or application to the judge, requesting expurgation. The petition must contain the relevant facts along with the applicable Iowa code sections regarding your case.
Second, after the petition or request 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.
Finally, if you complete the correct submissions and meet the cancellation prerequisites, the judge rules on his request and will often grant expungement without a hearing by entering an order requiring the court clerk and the necessary state agencies to expunge or seal the case record.
You have the right to handle your own cancellation or hire an attorney. The choice is yours. Typically, the more complex the legal matter, the more you need an attorney. Fortunately, expunctions in Iowa are usually relatively simple, in other words, if you meet the requirements for expungement under Iowa code, the judge should grant your request. All you need to get a discharge is to file the correct legal documents with the court clerk 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.