Which Convictions Can Never Be Sealed

The first question in any relief matter is not whether the person deserves it. It is whether the statute reaches the offense at all — and where it does not, no amount of rehabilitation, time or argument changes the answer.

What is typically excluded

Beyond the categories, statutes frequently exclude by grade — all felonies above a class, or any offense carrying more than a stated maximum sentence — and by count, capping how many convictions a person may have and still qualify.

Establishing which offense the record actually shows

Before the list can be applied, the offense has to be identified precisely, and this is where a surprising number of people reach the wrong answer about themselves. The exclusion attaches to the offense of conviction, not to what the person was arrested for or what the indictment originally charged. Someone arrested for a felony assault who pled to a misdemeanor is governed by the misdemeanor statute, and the reverse also happens: a charge reduced in negotiation is sometimes recorded under the original section by a clerk who never updated the entry.

Subsection matters as much as section. Assault, theft and burglary statutes commonly contain graded subsections, and an exclusion list will name some and not others. A certified disposition from the clerk of the sentencing court states the statute, the subsection and the grade, which is the only document that settles it — a printout from an online docket frequently abbreviates all three.

Three further wrinkles recur. Attempt, solicitation and conspiracy are treated as excluded in some states and as separate lesser offenses in others. Convictions from another state or from federal court are mapped onto the local list by a comparable-offense analysis, which can produce a result neither statute obviously requires. And juvenile adjudications run under a separate confidentiality and sealing regime entirely, so an adult exclusion list may say nothing at all about them.

Conditions that suspend eligibility

Separate from permanent exclusions are conditions that make an otherwise eligible person ineligible for now:

• Pending charges, anywhere, which almost universally suspend eligibility.
• Ongoing supervision. Waiting periods usually run from completion of probation or parole, not from conviction — see how supervision ends and what discharges it.
• Unpaid restitution, fines and fees, which many states treat as incomplete sentence.
• Subsequent convictions, which restart the clean-period clock.
• An earlier grant of relief, where the statute permits it only once.

The financial condition is the one that most often blocks people who are otherwise ready. Several states now allow a court to waive or convert outstanding fees where inability to pay is established, which is worth raising expressly rather than assuming the balance is fatal.

Why the lists differ so much

Exclusion lists are legislative compromises, assembled and amended over decades, and they track the concerns of the moment more than any coherent theory of seriousness. That is why the impaired driving exclusion sits alongside eligibility for some property felonies, and why two neighboring states can treat the same conviction oppositely.

It also means the lists change. Several states have narrowed exclusions substantially in recent years, and some have introduced automatic sealing for categories that previously required a petition. A person told years ago that they were ineligible should check again rather than relying on that answer.

The direction of travel is uneven, though. Lists grow by addition far more readily than they shrink: an offense enters after a case that draws attention and is rarely removed later, which is why some exclusions have no obvious relationship to the categories around them. And where a legislature does narrow a list, the amendment does not automatically reach convictions entered before it. Some states make the change expressly retroactive, some apply the statute in force at the time of the petition rather than at the time of the offense, and some say nothing, leaving the question to be argued. An applicant relying on a recent narrowing needs to know which of those three the state did, because the answer decides whether the amendment helps them at all.

What remains when sealing is closed

Four routes continue to matter:

1. Certificates of relief or rehabilitation, which lift specific statutory bars — to licenses, to employment in certain fields — without concealing the conviction. See what they actually restore.
2. Pardon, an executive act that in many states restores rights and in some opens a sealing route that was otherwise closed. The application process is its own undertaking.
3. Reporting time limits, which stop many non-conviction items and some older information appearing in commercial background reports regardless of the court record.
4. Individualized assessment requirements, which increasingly oblige employers and landlords to weigh the offense, its age and its relevance rather than applying a blanket rule — a shift that has changed hiring practice more than sealing has.

None of these hides the conviction. What they do is separate the record from its consequences, which for most people is the outcome they were actually seeking. Before assuming a case is a conviction at all, check how it was resolved: a deferred disposition or a set-aside is treated differently by the exclusion lists, and by everyone who later reads the record.