How to Get Your Criminal Record Expunged in Missouri

To get your criminal record expunged in Missouri, you file a petition in the circuit court where your case was heard, wait out the required period after finishing your sentence (one year for a misdemeanor, three years for a felony), pay off every fine and restitution amount tied to the case, and stay free of new convictions. If the judge finds you meet those requirements and your offense isn’t on the state’s ineligible list, the court seals and destroys the records.

Check Whether Your Offense Qualifies

Eligibility comes down to what you were convicted of, how long ago you finished your sentence, and what you’ve done since. Under Missouri’s expungement statute, a misdemeanor becomes eligible one year after you complete your sentence, probation, or parole. A felony takes three years from the date you finished all terms of your sentence.¹ During that waiting period, you cannot have been found guilty of any new misdemeanor or felony. Minor traffic violations don’t count against you.

Every financial obligation on the case has to be cleared before you file. Outstanding fines, court costs, or restitution will sink the petition no matter how much time has passed.

There are lifetime caps on how many convictions you can clear:

Up to two felony convictions
Up to three misdemeanor convictions or ordinance violations that carry a potential jail sentence
No limit on infractions

Multiple charges from the same incident count individually against those caps.¹

Offenses That Cannot Be Expunged

A long list of serious offenses stays on your record permanently regardless of how much time has passed. The major categories:

Class A felonies
Dangerous felonies as defined elsewhere in Missouri law, including arson, robbery, and certain drug trafficking crimes
Any offense requiring sex offender registration and everything in Missouri’s sexual offenses chapter
Any felony where death is an element of the offense
Felony assault, any level of domestic assault, and felony kidnapping
All DWI and boating-under-the-influence offenses

The statute also names dozens of specific code sections covering crimes like child abuse, weapons violations, identity theft, bribery, and election fraud. Because the list has been amended several times, check the current text of the statute or ask an attorney before assuming your charge is eligible.¹

If You Were Arrested but Never Convicted

An arrest that didn’t lead to a conviction has its own paths to expungement, some of which apply even to offenses that would otherwise be ineligible.

Under a separate statute, you can clear an arrest record when the arrest was based on false information, there is no current probable cause to believe you committed the offense, no charges will be pursued, and you didn’t receive a suspended imposition of sentence. A second track under the same statute covers arrests for certain moving violations (not DWI) that ended in dismissal or a not-guilty finding. No lifetime caps apply, and all offenses are potentially eligible.²

If you were arrested for something that would qualify under the main expungement statute but charges were never filed, you can petition after eighteen months from the arrest date, provided you weren’t charged with or convicted of any misdemeanor or felony during that time.¹

Marijuana Convictions Are Handled Separately

If your only conviction is a marijuana offense covered by Amendment 3, you probably don’t need to file anything. The 2022 constitutional amendment required courts across the state to review their files and expunge eligible marijuana charges automatically. Courts are still working through the backlog: as of early 2025, more than 140,000 marijuana cases had been expunged out of roughly 307,000 reviewed, with some counties still sifting through older paper records. If a marijuana conviction that should have been cleared is still showing up, contact the circuit court where the case was heard to check its status.

Gather Your Case Records

Before you file, pull together everything about the case: the case number, arrest date, exact charges, final outcome, sentencing dates, the name of the court, and the arresting agency. You’ll also need proof that you finished your sentence, probation, or parole, plus documentation that all fines and restitution have been paid. Gaps in any of this can delay your petition or give the prosecutor a reason to object.

File the Petition in the Right Court

Standardized expungement petition forms are available through circuit court clerks’ offices and the Missouri Courts website. Fill them out carefully; errors in case numbers or charge descriptions cause problems downstream. File with the circuit court in the county where your original case was heard. A filing fee applies, and the amount varies by county and case type. If you can’t afford it, ask the judge to waive the fee based on inability to pay.

Serve Notice on the Right Parties

After filing, you’re responsible for making sure notice reaches every party with a stake in the case. That means the prosecuting attorney’s office, the arresting law enforcement agency, and any other entity that holds records related to your case. The sheriff’s office or a private process server can handle delivery.

The prosecutor has 30 days after receiving notice to file a written objection. If an objection comes in, the court must hold a hearing within 60 days. If no one objects within 30 days, the court may still set a hearing but isn’t required to. Either way, the court must issue a final order granting or denying the petition within six months of the filing date.¹

What the Judge Weighs

Even when you meet the technical requirements, the judge still has discretion. The court evaluates six factors:

Whether the required waiting period has been met
Whether you’ve avoided new convictions during that period
Whether you’ve paid all fines, costs, and restitution
Whether you have any pending criminal cases
Whether your conduct shows you’re not a threat to public safety
Whether granting expungement serves the interests of justice

If you satisfy the first four factors, the law presumes expungement should be granted, and the burden shifts to the prosecutor to show it shouldn’t be. A victim of the crime has the right to speak at the hearing, and the court can find that the ongoing impact on the victim is enough to overcome that presumption.¹ Uncontested petitions with a clear waiting period and paid financial obligations tend to move through without much trouble.

What Expungement Actually Does

Once the court grants your petition, records tied to the arrest, charges, trial, and conviction are sealed and eventually destroyed. For most purposes you’re restored to the status you had before the events occurred, but there are limits worth knowing about.

Answering Employers

After expungement, you can legally answer “no” when an employer asks whether you’ve ever been convicted of a crime, as long as no other public criminal record remains. That protection carries exceptions. You still have to disclose expunged offenses when applying for:

A state-issued professional license, certificate, or permit
A gaming license or concealed-carry permit
Jobs with casinos, lottery operations, or emergency services, including law enforcement
Jobs at federally insured banks, savings institutions, or credit unions
Jobs in the insurance industry
Any position where federal or state law requires the employer to screen out applicants with certain convictions

Employers in the last three categories have to tell you about the disclosure requirement. And even when you must disclose, an employer generally can’t automatically reject you based on the expunged offense alone; it can be considered but not used as a bar, except in the banking, insurance, and federally mandated categories.¹

Firearms

A Missouri federal court ruled in 2023 that an expungement under this statute fully restores the right to purchase and possess firearms. The FBI’s background check system, though, doesn’t automatically update when a Missouri court grants an expungement. If you’re denied a firearm purchase after expungement, you’ll need to challenge the denial directly with the FBI by submitting your expungement order and requesting a correction to the federal database.

Private Background Check Companies

Court records and law enforcement databases get updated when the order is issued, but private background check companies pull data from public records and store it in their own systems. An expungement order doesn’t automatically reach them, and an expunged record can keep appearing in commercial background checks for months or longer. If it happens, contact the company directly with a copy of the expungement order and ask that the record be removed. Clearinghouse services also push updated record information to major background check companies and can speed up the process.

Federal Records

Missouri expungement reaches state and local records only. Federal agencies may keep their own copies of arrest and conviction data, and a state court order doesn’t bind them. If your case involved federal charges or federal databases beyond the FBI’s firearms check system, those records may persist regardless of what the state court does.

1
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes 610.140 – Expungement of Certain Criminal Records
2
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes 610.122 – Expungement of Certain Arrest Records