Indiana Rights Restoration: Who Qualifies, Filing, and Limits

Indiana’s Second Chance Law, found at IC 35-38-9, lets you petition a court to seal or expunge certain arrests and convictions from public view after a waiting period that depends on the severity of the offense. It works on a tiered system: arrests without a conviction, misdemeanors, minor felonies, less serious felonies, and serious felonies each have their own rules, waiting periods, and level of judicial discretion. One rule sits above all the others and catches people out constantly: you get exactly one expungement petition in your lifetime. Filing before you’ve pulled every record from every county can permanently forfeit your chance at the ones you missed.

Who Qualifies and When You Can File

Eligibility turns on what you were charged with, whether you were convicted, and how much time has passed.

Arrests Without a Conviction

If you were arrested or charged but never convicted, or your conviction was later overturned, you can petition one year after the arrest or charge date. There is no filing fee. The court will grant the petition as long as you aren’t currently in a pretrial diversion program and no charges are pending. Juvenile delinquency allegations that did not result in an adjudication also fall under this tier.¹

Misdemeanors

Misdemeanor convictions become eligible five years after the conviction date. The prosecutor can agree in writing to a shorter period, but that’s uncommon. You need no pending charges, no new convictions in the previous five years, and all fines, fees, court costs, and restitution paid in full. If you meet these conditions, the court is required to grant the petition. A judge cannot deny it on discretion alone.¹

Minor Class D and Level 6 Felonies

For Class D felonies under the old classification and Level 6 felonies that did not involve bodily injury, the waiting period is eight years from the conviction date, with the same financial and clean-record conditions. Grant is mandatory when the conditions are met. Sex offenses, perjury, official misconduct, and any felony involving bodily injury are excluded from this tier entirely.¹

Less Serious Felonies

Felonies that don’t qualify for the minor-felony tier but didn’t result in serious bodily injury or death fall under IC 35-38-9-4. The waiting period is the later of eight years from conviction or three years after you finish your entire sentence, including probation and parole. This is where discretion enters. The court “may” grant the petition rather than “shall,” which means the judge weighs whether expungement serves the interests of justice and the prosecutor’s position carries real weight.²

Serious Felonies

The most serious eligible felonies, including those that caused serious bodily injury and those committed by elected officials outside of official misconduct, require the later of ten years from conviction or five years after sentence completion. This tier is also fully discretionary. Permanently excluded: murder and attempted murder, human trafficking, sex crimes under IC 35-42-4, official misconduct by elected or judicial officers, and any felony conviction resulting in another person’s death.³

Across every felony tier, anyone with two or more felony convictions involving the unlawful use of a deadly weapon in separate incidents is ineligible. Sex and violent offenders as defined in IC 11-8-8-5 are also excluded from every felony tier.³

The One-Petition Rule Everyone Underestimates

You get one expungement petition in your lifetime under Indiana law. If you have records in multiple counties, you file separate petitions in each county, but every one of those filings has to happen within a single 365-day window to count as your one lifetime petition.¹

The practical consequence is severe. File a petition covering only some of your records, discover a case in another county a year later, and you may have permanently lost the ability to expunge those remaining records. Before you file anything, pull a complete criminal history and confirm you’ve identified every case in every jurisdiction. Filing prematurely is the single most consequential mistake in this process.

What You Need Before You File

Your petition must include your full legal name, Social Security number, and date of birth, plus the exact cause or case number for every conviction, the arrest dates, and the dates judgments were entered. A missing case number means the court order won’t cover that record.

You can look up case information through the Indiana Courts’ MyCase portal, which is the public face of the state’s Odyssey case management system.⁴ Given the one-petition rule, it’s worth also requesting a formal criminal history from the Indiana State Police. It will catch cases you may have forgotten or cases in counties you didn’t expect. Petition forms are available through the clerk’s office in the county where the conviction was entered, and Indiana’s judicial branch maintains approved forms as well.

How the Filing Works

You file in the circuit or superior court of the county where the conviction was originally entered. Most Indiana courts use e-filing through an approved electronic service provider. Arrest-only petitions under IC 35-38-9-1 carry no filing fee. Conviction-based petitions require the standard civil case filing fee, which the court can reduce or waive on a showing of financial hardship.⁵

After filing, you serve the county prosecutor. The prosecutor has 30 days to respond; silence past that window waives any objection and the court moves forward.⁵ For misdemeanors and minor felonies where all statutory conditions are met, the court must grant the petition even over a prosecutor’s objection. For the discretionary tiers, the prosecutor’s position carries more weight and the judge may set a hearing before deciding. The prosecutor is also required to notify victims of record so they can exercise their rights under Indiana’s victim notification laws. From filing to final order, expect 60 to 180 days, longer for contested or multi-county filings.⁶

What Expungement Actually Does

The legal effect depends on the tier, and the distinction matters more than most people expect.

For misdemeanor convictions and minor Class D or Level 6 felonies, the court orders the records fully expunged under IC 35-38-9-6. They are sealed from public access, and the conviction is treated as though it never occurred for most purposes.⁷

For more serious felonies under IC 35-38-9-4 and 35-38-9-5, the records are “marked as expunged” under IC 35-38-9-7 rather than fully sealed. Marked records disappear from public view but remain accessible to law enforcement, prosecutors, and certain other entities. A fully expunged misdemeanor effectively vanishes from most background checks. A marked felony still lives in restricted databases.⁸

Regardless of tier, an expunged conviction is not erased everywhere. If you’re later arrested for a new offense, the court can consider the prior expunged conviction at sentencing, use it for habitual offender enhancements, and admit it as evidence in the new proceeding as if it had never been expunged.⁹

Employment

Once your record is expunged, an employer asking about your criminal history has to phrase the question to exclude expunged convictions, such as “Have you ever been convicted of a crime that has not been expunged by a court?” You can legally answer “no” to a question phrased that way. Law enforcement agencies and probation or community corrections departments are exempt from these protections. If you’re applying to a police department or a similar agency, your expunged record remains visible to them and can factor into hiring.⁹

Professional licensing is a different story. The National Practitioner Data Bank, which tracks actions against medical and other licensed professionals, does not remove a record simply because the underlying conviction was expunged. Expungement removes the public record but does not vacate the licensing action itself.¹⁰ If your conviction triggered board action against a license, get specific advice for your profession before assuming the petition resolves it.

Firearms

For misdemeanors and minor felonies fully expunged under IC 35-38-9-6, the conviction is treated as if it never happened, which generally removes the state-law barrier to possessing a firearm. For serious felonies merely “marked as expunged” under IC 35-38-9-7, restoration is less absolute, and certain violent felony convictions may continue to carry restrictions.

Federal law is a separate layer. Under 18 USC 922(g), anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year is prohibited from possessing firearms.¹¹ Whether a state expungement lifts the federal prohibition depends on the specifics of the court order. For domestic violence convictions, a state expungement can satisfy the federal requirement, but only if the order does not expressly prohibit firearm possession.

Voting

You don’t need an expungement to vote in Indiana. Voting rights are restored automatically once your sentence, including probation or parole, is complete. If your sentence is finished, you can register and cast a ballot.

What Expungement Does Not Do

Indiana’s Second Chance Law controls what state agencies and private employers can see. It does not bind the federal government, and several federal contexts treat the conviction as if it still exists.

Security Clearances

The SF-86 questionnaire used for federal security clearance applications requires you to disclose police records “regardless of whether the record in your case has been sealed, expunged, or otherwise stricken from the court record, or the charge was dismissed.” Failing to disclose an expunged conviction on an SF-86 is worse than the conviction itself, because the clearance process treats dishonesty as a disqualifying character issue.¹²

Immigration

For non-citizens, a state expungement does not remove the underlying conviction for immigration purposes. USCIS has taken the position that state actions to expunge, dismiss, or vacate a conviction under a rehabilitative statute do not affect the conviction’s existence in immigration proceedings. That applies to naturalization applications and removal proceedings. Convictions involving controlled substances or crimes involving moral turpitude remain fully effective regardless of expungement.¹³

Travel to Canada

Canada makes its own admissibility determination. A U.S. expungement does not automatically resolve inadmissibility under Canadian immigration law. Depending on the offense, you may need to apply for individual rehabilitation, available five years after completing your sentence, or obtain a temporary resident permit. Certain offenses carrying a potential Canadian sentence of less than ten years may qualify you for deemed rehabilitation based on elapsed time alone.¹⁴

Mistakes That Sink Petitions

The errors that derail Indiana expungement petitions follow a pattern.

Filing before you’ve identified every record in every county is the worst. The one-petition rule means an incomplete filing can leave records permanently beyond reach. Run a full criminal history before you start.

Unpaid financial obligations are the second most common issue. Every conviction-based tier requires that all fines, fees, court costs, and restitution be satisfied in full. People forget old court costs or assume a payment plan still in progress counts as satisfied. It doesn’t. Pull payment records from every court before filing.

Timing errors also trip people up. For the more serious felony tiers, the waiting period is measured from two starting points, and you must satisfy both. Someone convicted eight years ago who finished probation only two years ago is not yet eligible under IC 35-38-9-4, which requires three years from sentence completion.² For the most serious eligible felonies, that post-sentence gap extends to five years.³

Finally, expectations. Expungement does not clear federal records, does not bind immigration courts, and will not help on a security clearance application. Know what an Indiana expungement does and does not accomplish before you file, and plan for the contexts where your record still matters.

1
Indiana Public Defender Council. Indiana Code Title 35 Article 38 Chapter 9 – Sealing and Expunging Conviction Records
2
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-4 – Expunging Certain Less Serious Felony Convictions
3
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-5 – Expunging Certain Serious Felony Convictions
4
Indiana Courts. MyCase – Indiana Courts Case Search
5
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-8 – Petition to Expunge Conviction Records
6
Indiana Courts. Detailed Information on Criminal Case Expungement
7
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-6 – Effect of Expunging Misdemeanor and Minor Felony Convictions
8
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-7 – Effect of Expunging Serious and Less Serious Felony Convictions
9
Indiana General Assembly. Indiana Code 35-38-9-10 – Unlawful Discrimination Against a Person Whose Record Has Been Expunged
10
National Practitioner Data Bank. NPDB Guidebook – Reporting State Licensure and Certification Actions
11
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts
12
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. DCSA SF-86 Guide
13
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. USCIS Policy Manual Volume 12 Part F Chapter 2 – Good Moral Character – Adjudicative Factors
14
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Overcome Criminal Convictions