If you have been convicted of a crime or disorderly persons offense in New Jersey, help may be available to you.  This applies to both adult and juvenile charges and convictions.  In many cases, record of your arrest and conviction can be expunged.  Some try to complete this process by themselves.  This is often a mistake.  A New Jersey expungement lawyer can give you the best chance of success on an expungement.

In most cases, whether or not your expungement will be granted is clear-cut – either you are eligible or you are not.  Some specific crimes are not expungeable.  Where the offense is expungeable, other waiting periods and exclusions apply.

However, this is not always the case.  In some expungements, the judge has discretion in granting the expungement petition.  In others, the law is still unsettled.  We pay close attention to New Jersey Expungement law – which changes from time to time – in order to provide expungements to as many people as possible.  Call to see if this may be possible in your particular case.

Expungement Process

The New Jersey expungement process begins with a determination as to whether you are eligible for an expungement.  In most cases, you should have a criminal history check performed on yourself.  This can ensure that you are indeed eligible and that we have complete and accurate information on your case history.

You can obtain your criminal history by being fingerprinted at a “Morpho Trak, Inc.” facility.  Morpho Trak has facilities scattered around the State of New Jersey.  Rather than actual fingerprints, Morpho Trak utilizes an electronic “live scan.” You must make an appointment with Morpho Trak, which can be done through their website.

There is also a form you must print and bring with you to your appointment.  The fee for undergoing this process at Morpho Trak is $41.00.   Morpho Trak will then mail you your criminal case history in a few weeks.

After obtaining your criminal case history, we will then determine whether an expungement petition should be filed.  If so, we will prepare and file the entire expungement petition.  This will include the NJ expungement petitition, verification, order for a hearing and proposed final order.  There is a $52.50 filing fee for an NJ expungement.

The court will stamp-file our petition package and return a copy to us.  We will then serve the petition package on all required government agencies.  Once we receive confirmation that these agencies have received these, we will see that the court processes the petition as quickly as possible.  New Jersey Courts are currently taking about 3 months to process these petitions.

NJ Expungement Eligibility

Strict rules apply to New Jersey Expungement eligibility.  Unlike most areas of criminal law, which tend to get stricter, the NJ legislature is trending toward making expungements available to more applicants every so often.  Whether you are eligible for an expugement depends on several factors.

These include the type of offense you were found guilty of.  In cases where the charges against you were dismissed outright, your expungement can be streamlined.  In other situations, various time periods must have elapsed since your offense and punishment.  Assuming you are eligible for an immediate expungement, we will draw up and serve the petition package immediately.   I know that time can be precious when a job or school opportunity is on the line.  We therefore work diligently to expedite the expungement process for you.

After receiving your final expungement order from the court, we will serve this order on the appropriate government agencies.  They will then remove the records of your criminal history from their public rolls.  At this point, the general public will not have access to these records and you will be able to answer “no” to any question pertaining to them.  Call now to speak with a New Jersey expungement lawyer.