How Long Does a Felony Stay on Your Record in Connecticut?

A felony conviction in Connecticut stays on your record permanently unless you clear it through one of two paths. Under Connecticut’s Clean Slate law, lower-level felonies (Class D, Class E, and unclassified felonies with a statutory maximum of five years or less) are erased automatically 10 years after your most recent conviction, provided the offense occurred on or after January 1, 2000. More serious felonies, and certain excluded offenses, are never eligible for Clean Slate erasure, and the only way to clear them is an absolute pardon from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. So the honest answer to how long a felony stays on your record in Connecticut is: ten years for eligible offenses, forever for everything else unless you are pardoned.

Which Felonies Clear Automatically After 10 Years

Clean Slate eligibility turns on the class of felony, not the sentence the judge handed down. The qualifying categories are:

Class D felonies, where the maximum possible sentence is five years or less
Class E felonies, where the maximum possible sentence is three years or less
Unclassified felonies with a statutory maximum of five years of imprisonment or less

This is where people get caught out. Eligibility depends on the maximum sentence the statute authorizes, not what you actually served.¹ If the law allowed more than five years for your offense, the conviction is not eligible even if the judge gave you probation. Class A, B, and C felonies carry potential sentences well above that threshold and are completely excluded from Clean Slate.²

Several categories of lower-level felony are also blocked from erasure no matter how much time has passed:

Family violence crimes designated as such under Connecticut law, for convictions on or after January 1, 2000
Sexual offenses, both violent and nonviolent, including those requiring sex offender registration
Specific statutory offenses including certain firearm violations and stalking-related crimes
DUI convictions where the person picks up another DUI within the following 10 years

These exclusions apply equally to automatic erasure and petition-based erasure.² If your felony sits in one of these buckets, a pardon is the only option.

When the 10-Year Clock Starts and Stops

For an eligible felony on or after January 1, 2000, no application is required. Erasure happens 10 years from the date the court entered your most recent judgment of conviction.³ Read that carefully. The clock runs from your most recent conviction of any kind, not from the specific felony you want cleared. Any new conviction during the window restarts the 10 years.

You also must have finished the full sentence tied to the conviction, including any incarceration, parole, special parole, transitional supervision, and probation, before erasure takes effect.¹ Eligible misdemeanors follow the same framework but clear after seven years instead of ten.

Older Convictions Require a Petition

If your eligible felony occurred before January 1, 2000, nothing happens automatically. You have to file a petition with the court.¹ The eligibility rules on offense class and blocked categories are identical, and you must also meet these conditions:

No conviction of any crime within the past 10 years
Completion of all imprisonment, parole, special parole, transitional supervision, and probation for the conviction you want erased and for any other state conviction on or after January 1, 2000
The conviction is not for a family violence crime, sexual offense, or other excluded category

You file form JD-CR-202 (Petition for Clean Slate Erasure), sworn under oath, with the clerk at the Superior Court where the conviction was entered.¹ The court reviews the petition and may schedule a hearing.

Felonies That Never Qualify: The Pardon Route

Class A, B, and C felonies, and any lower-level felony on the blocked list, do not clear with time. The only mechanism to remove them from your record is an absolute pardon from the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles. A pardon is executive clemency and operates separately from the court-driven Clean Slate process.

Pardon Eligibility

You can apply for an absolute pardon five years after the date of disposition of your most recent felony conviction. You cannot be on probation or parole, cannot have pending charges or open cases in any jurisdiction, and cannot have had a nolle entered within the previous 13 months.⁴

Application Package

Everything is submitted electronically through the Board’s ePardon Portal. You need:

A State Police Criminal History Report from the DESPP Bureau of Identification, dated within one year of your application (the fee is $75)
A notarized Background Investigation Authorization
Three reference questionnaires from people supporting your petition, with no more than one from a family member
Police reports for any arrest in the last 10 years that resulted in a conviction
A probation letter from the Adult Probation office confirming your discharge date and status, if you ever served probation
A valid driver’s license or state ID
Proof of income

The Board reviews the application and holds a pre-screen session.⁵ If a full hearing is granted, you must appear in person even if you have moved out of Connecticut.⁶

What Clearing Your Record Actually Means

Whether the record is cleared by Clean Slate or by pardon, the legal effect is the same. You are “deemed to have never been arrested” with respect to the erased proceedings and may swear under oath that the arrest and conviction never happened. For an absolute pardon granted on or after October 1, 1974, all police and court records are erased automatically once the pardon issues.³

Erasure is not quite the same as the record disappearing. Courts can still order disclosure in narrow circumstances, such as false arrest lawsuits, perjury investigations, or habeas corpus proceedings. Records needed to verify sex offender registration obligations or standing criminal protective orders remain available to law enforcement and prosecutors. Published Appellate Court or Supreme Court opinions tied to your case are also not erased.³

Employment

Once a record is erased, no employer in Connecticut can require you to disclose the arrest, charge, or conviction, and employers generally cannot ask about criminal history on an initial job application unless state or federal law or a security bond requires it. Job applications must carry a notice informing you of this right.⁷ Before erasure, a felony conviction can appear on background checks indefinitely, because the Fair Credit Reporting Act’s time limits apply to non-conviction information, not convictions.⁸

Firearms

A Connecticut absolute pardon can restore firearm rights, because federal law treats a pardoned person as not “convicted” for gun-possession purposes unless the pardon expressly bars firearms.⁹ Whether Clean Slate erasure has the same effect under federal firearms law is less settled, and talking to an attorney before buying or possessing a weapon is the safer course.

Immigration

State-level erasure does not necessarily resolve immigration consequences. Federal immigration law uses its own definition of “conviction” and looks at whether you pleaded guilty or were found guilty and whether any punishment was imposed. A record erased or vacated for rehabilitative reasons, rather than because of a legal defect in the original proceedings, may still count as a conviction for deportation or inadmissibility purposes.¹⁰ Clean Slate erasure runs automatically on the passage of time, which looks more like a rehabilitative mechanism than a correction of legal error. If you have any immigration exposure, your attorney can petition the Superior Court to access erased records, and you should speak with an immigration lawyer before assuming an erased Connecticut record solves the problem.²

1
State of Connecticut. Petition for Clean Slate Erasure
2
Connecticut General Assembly. Connecticut Code Chapter 961a – Criminal Records
3
Justia. Connecticut Code 54-142a – Erasure of Criminal Records
4
State of Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles. Pardon Eligibility
5
State of Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles. Documents Required for Absolute Pardon Application
6
State of Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles. Pardon FAQs
7
Connecticut General Assembly. Connecticut Public Act 16-83 – An Act Concerning Fair Chance Employment
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. United States Code Title 15 Section 1681c
9
Connecticut General Assembly. Restoration of Right to Carry Firearms
10
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 12 Part F Chapter 2 – Adjudicative Factors