What Felonies Can Be Expunged in Missouri: Rules and Waiting Period

In Missouri, you can petition to expunge any felony conviction that is not specifically listed as excluded under Section 610.140 of the Missouri Revised Statutes. The law works by exclusion: rather than naming every felony that qualifies, it names every felony that doesn’t, and everything else is potentially eligible. So the question of what felonies can be expunged in Missouri starts with checking your offense against the barred list, then confirming you meet the waiting period, financial, and clean-record requirements that apply to every petition.

Felonies Missouri Will Not Expunge

Section 610.140(3) sets out eleven categories of offenses that are permanently off the table. The categories overlap, so a single conviction can fall under more than one bar. The major groups are:

Every Class A felony. These are Missouri’s most serious offenses, including first-degree murder.¹
Dangerous felonies as defined in Section 556.061. The definition is broad and includes first-degree robbery, first-degree assault, second-degree murder, first-degree arson, first-degree domestic assault, first-degree elder abuse, armed criminal action, vehicle hijacking punished as a Class A felony, and several sexual offenses, among others.²
Any felony where death is an element of the offense. This catches crimes that may not be Class A but still require a death to prove.¹
All felony assault, all domestic assault at any level (including misdemeanor domestic assault), and felony kidnapping. This is broader than many people expect; it is not limited to first-degree charges.¹
Any crime that triggers a requirement to register as a sex offender, regardless of its classification.¹
Intoxication-related traffic and boating offenses as defined in Section 577.001. Felony DWI cannot be expunged in Missouri. This is a common point of confusion.¹
Any traffic-related violation committed by someone who holds or is required to hold a commercial driver’s license.³
A long list of individually named statutes under subsection 3(6). These span child abuse, weapons offenses, election fraud, tampering with judicial proceedings, and other categories too varied to group neatly.

Most weapons offenses under Section 571.030 are also ineligible, with narrow exceptions for certain concealed-carry convictions predating January 1, 2017, and one specific subdivision of that section.¹

If your conviction is not sure to fall into any of the categories above, the most reliable check is to compare the statute number you were convicted under against subsection 3(6)’s list of individually excluded sections.

Felonies That Can Be Expunged

Any felony that is not caught by one of the exclusions is potentially eligible. Because the barred list concentrates on violence, death, and sexual offenses, most non-violent felonies are reasonable candidates. Common examples include:

Property crimes such as felony theft, property damage, and fraud offenses that are not individually named in subsection 3(6).
Felony possession of a controlled substance, if the specific statute of conviction is not among the excluded sections.
Financial crimes like forgery and passing bad checks at the felony level, when not specifically listed.

Being outside the exclusion list does not guarantee expungement. It means the court is allowed to consider your petition. Whether the judge grants it depends on the rest of the requirements and on discretionary factors described below.

Waiting Period and Eligibility Requirements

For a felony, you must wait three years after you finish every component of your sentence, including probation and parole, before you can file. For a misdemeanor the wait is one year.³

During that time you have to stay clean. A new misdemeanor or felony conviction (other than minor traffic violations under Chapters 301 through 307) resets your eligibility, and any pending charge at the moment you file will disqualify the petition.¹

You also need to have paid every financial obligation attached to the conviction, including fines and any court-ordered restitution. An outstanding balance keeps you ineligible until it is resolved.³

Lifetime Cap on Expungements

Missouri limits how many offenses one person can have expunged over a lifetime, so you cannot clear a long record of unrelated convictions. There is one useful exception: if multiple crimes were committed as part of the same course of conduct, you can include all of them in a single petition, and they count only as the highest-level offense against the lifetime cap.¹

What the Judge Weighs

Meeting the technical requirements gets you a hearing, not a guaranteed result. The court considers:

Whether you have completed the required waiting period.
Whether you have stayed free of new convictions and have no pending charges.
Whether all fines and restitution are paid.
Whether your habits and conduct show you are not a threat to public safety.
Whether sealing the record is consistent with the public welfare and the interests of justice.

The last two factors give the judge real discretion. Even a petition that checks every box can be denied if the court concludes the public interest does not support sealing the record. Evidence of employment, community ties, and rehabilitation is where a case is often won or lost.³

What a Granted Expungement Actually Does

Expungement in Missouri seals the record from public view rather than destroying it. In most circumstances you can legally deny the arrest, plea, trial, or conviction ever happened, and you cannot be prosecuted for perjury for failing to disclose an expunged offense in response to a general inquiry. Standard employer and landlord background checks should not surface the record.¹

When You Still Have to Disclose

The statute carves out specific situations where you must still reveal an expunged offense:

Applications for any Missouri license, certificate, or permit to practice a profession.
Any license issued under Chapter 313 (gaming), or employment with an entity licensed under that chapter.
Paid or unpaid positions with a law enforcement agency or emergency services provider.
When asked by any court, or when you are charged with a new offense.

The professional licensing exception catches more people than any other. If you apply for a nursing license, a real estate license, or any other state-issued credential, the conviction has to go on the application. The statute does prohibit a licensing board from automatically disqualifying you based on an expunged offense; the board can weigh it as one factor, but it cannot treat the expunged conviction alone as grounds for denial.³

Expungement also does not erase the conviction for future sentencing purposes. If you are convicted of a new crime, the court can still treat the expunged offense as a prior conviction when deciding your sentence, so the record does not reset for enhanced-penalty purposes.¹

1
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes 610.140 – Expungement of Certain Criminal Records
2
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes 556.061 – Code Definitions
3
Missouri Revisor of Statutes. Missouri Revised Statutes Section 610.140 – Expungement of Certain Criminal Records