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

In Indiana, a felony conviction stays on your record for life unless you successfully petition a court to expunge it. There is no automatic expiration. The state’s expungement law can seal most felony records after a waiting period of five to ten years, but you have to file for it yourself, and certain serious offenses can never be removed at all. So the honest answer to how long a felony stays on your record in Indiana is: as long as you let it, within the limits the statute sets on what you can clear and when.

Why the Record Doesn’t Clear Itself

Indiana court systems and the Indiana State Police criminal history database keep felony convictions indefinitely. Federal reporting law doesn’t help here either. The Fair Credit Reporting Act bars consumer reporting agencies from including arrests older than seven years in a background report, but that seven-year cap does not apply to convictions.¹ A felony from 30 years ago can still surface on a background check an employer or landlord orders today.

Waiting Periods by Felony Type

Indiana sorts felonies into tiers, and the waiting period, the discretion the court has, and the exclusions all shift depending on which tier your conviction falls into.

Level 6 Felony Reduced to a Misdemeanor

If your Level 6 felony was converted to a Class A misdemeanor, either at sentencing or afterward, you fall under the misdemeanor rules. The waiting period is five years from the date of conviction, and you must have stayed crime-free during those five years. The prosecutor can agree in writing to a shorter wait. If you meet the requirements, the court must grant expungement.²

Level 6 Felony Not Reduced

For a Level 6 felony that was never reduced (or the old Class D felony for crimes before July 1, 2014), the wait is eight years from the date of conviction, with no felony or misdemeanor convictions during those eight years. The court must grant expungement if you qualify. A prosecutor can consent in writing to a shorter period. Anyone convicted of a felony that caused bodily injury, sex or violent offenders, and anyone convicted of perjury or official misconduct cannot use this section.³

Higher-Level Felonies Without Serious Bodily Injury or Death

Felonies at Levels 1 through 5 that don’t qualify under the Level 6 section move to the next tier. The waiting period is the later of eight years from conviction or three years after you finish your sentence, including probation or parole. The prosecutor can agree to a shorter timeline. Here a crucial distinction kicks in: the court may grant expungement, not must. Even a perfect petition can be denied. This category excludes felonies that caused serious bodily injury or death, sex and violent offenders, elected officials convicted while in office, and a handful of other specific offenses.⁴

Felonies Involving Serious Bodily Injury

Felonies that caused serious bodily injury but not death fall into the most restrictive expungeable tier. The waiting period is the later of ten years from conviction or five years after you complete your sentence. The grant is discretionary; a prosecutor can consent in writing to a shorter period.⁵

Felonies That Can Never Be Expunged

Some convictions stay on your record no matter how much time passes. The exclusions appear across multiple sections of the statute, and they cover:

Sex offenses and anyone classified as a sex or violent offender under Indiana law.
Homicide offenses, including murder, voluntary manslaughter, and involuntary manslaughter.
Human trafficking and exploitation convictions.
Official misconduct by a public official.
Two or more felony convictions involving a deadly weapon that were not part of the same criminal episode.
Any felony conviction that resulted in someone’s death, even outside the homicide statute.

If your conviction sits in one of those categories, no waiting period applies because the door is closed.⁶

Baseline Requirements for Any Petition

Beyond the waiting periods and offense exclusions, every expungement petition has to clear the same basics. You can have no pending criminal charges when you file. All fines, fees, court costs, and restitution tied to the conviction must be paid in full. And you must have stayed conviction-free for the applicable period: five years for the reduced-felony route, eight years for Level 6 and higher felonies.⁷

You Get One Petition for Life

This is the trap worth knowing before anything else. Indiana limits you to one expungement petition in your entire lifetime.⁸ Convictions spread across multiple counties can be handled as one petition if all the county filings happen within a single 365-day window. File too early, miss a conviction, or botch the paperwork, and you generally don’t get another shot.

Two narrow exceptions exist. If a petition is denied on its merits, you can refile for convictions that weren’t expunged the first time. A court may also let you amend a petition to add a missed conviction if you can show the omission was an honest mistake or outside your control.⁵ Neither is guaranteed. Being thorough the first time, ideally with an attorney reviewing the paperwork, matters.

Filing and What Happens Next

Petitions are filed in the circuit or superior court in the county where the conviction happened. The petition is a verified document, signed under penalty of perjury, that lists your identifying information, addresses since the offense, and the dates of arrest and conviction.⁹ Filing fees for conviction expungements run around $157 in many Indiana counties, though the exact amount varies by court. Attorney fees, if you hire one, typically run from several hundred to a few thousand dollars on top.

Once filed, the prosecuting attorney gets notice and has 30 days to respond. Silence waives the objection and the court can move forward without a hearing. If the prosecutor objects, they file their reasons and serve you a copy, and the court sets a hearing no sooner than 60 days after you originally served the petition. At the hearing, you prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the facts in your petition are true. Victims of the offense may submit statements for or against. A petition that doesn’t meet the statutory requirements, or that shows ineligibility on its face, can be summarily denied, and a denial is appealable.⁶

What Expungement Actually Changes

Expungement in Indiana seals records; it doesn’t destroy them. The practical result still matters: the conviction won’t appear on standard background checks run by employers, landlords, or schools.⁵

Legally, you are treated as if the conviction never happened. On job and rental applications, you can answer “no” to questions about convictions, as long as the question excludes expunged records. Applications are required to phrase criminal history questions in terms like “Have you ever been convicted of a crime that has not been expunged by a court?”¹⁰

Law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and some professional licensing boards keep limited access to sealed records. Internal law enforcement records, diversion program records, and licensing or certification disciplinary records are not altered by an expungement order.⁵

Indiana also makes it illegal to refuse to hire you, deny you a license, expel you from school, or otherwise discriminate against you because of an expunged conviction. A violation is a Class C infraction and can be punished as contempt of court, and you can seek an injunction to stop the discriminatory conduct. One exception: law enforcement agencies and probation or community corrections departments are not bound by these protections and can consider your full criminal history even after expungement.¹⁰

Firearm Rights

Under federal law, an expunged state felony generally removes the federal firearms disability, because federal law recognizes state expungements and pardons as restoring rights. Domestic violence is the exception. Indiana separately prohibits anyone convicted of a domestic violence offense from possessing a firearm, and expungement alone doesn’t lift that restriction. You can petition to restore firearm rights, but only after at least five years from the conviction date. Federal firearms prohibitions for domestic violence misdemeanors apply independently of state expungement. If your conviction was a federal offense, only a presidential pardon restores firearm rights.¹¹

If an Expunged Record Keeps Showing Up

Some third-party background check companies continue reporting old records because they pull from stale databases. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, those companies must investigate and correct disputed errors within 30 days. A company that keeps reporting an expunged conviction after being notified may owe you actual damages such as lost wages, statutory damages, and attorney’s fees.¹ A certified copy of your expungement order makes disputes faster to resolve.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c
2
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-2 – Expunging Misdemeanor Convictions
3
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-3
4
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-4 – Expunging Certain Less Serious Felony Convictions
5
Indiana Courts. Expungements Detailed Information on Criminal Case Expungement
6
Indiana Public Defender Council. Indiana Code 35-38-9 – Sealing and Expunging Conviction Records
7
Indiana Legal Services. Expungement – Indiana Legal Services
8
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-9
9
Elkhart County. Verified Petition for Expungement/Sealing of Conviction Records
10
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-10 – Unlawful Discrimination Against a Person Whose Record Has Been Expunged or Sealed
11
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Most Frequently Asked Firearms Questions and Answers