If you are a Texas resident who was given deferred adjudication recently, you were probably told that after your probation was over and all charges were dismissed, your criminal records would also be clean. This is, however, a misunderstanding between the criminal courts and people who have served their deferred adjudication in the state. In order to get arrest records, court proceedings and probation information off of your record, you will have to submit a petition for non-disclosure to the court, which then has to be granted and approved.
What Is a Non-Disclosure Order?
If you are granted a motion for non-disclosure order, this means that your criminal records will not be revealed to the public by a criminal justice agency, according to the Freedom of Information Act. However, this doesn’t keep your criminal history safe from any criminal justice agencies to other agencies who are requesting it from the court. If you committed a misdemeanor crime, you can petition for an order of non-disclosure as long as you completed your deferred adjudication. If you committed a felony, however, you will have to wait for ten years after your deferred adjudication before you can file a petition. It’s important to note that there are certain misdemeanor and felony cases that cannot be granted a non-disclosure order.
What Is the Petition Process for a Non-Disclosure Order?
In order to successfully be granted this order, you will have to convince the court that you won’t commit the same criminal offense again and that you will stay out of trouble. Depending on how busy the Texas county is and the time of your filing, the whole process could take anywhere from four to nine months. The more facts that are available about your case, though, the quicker the process will go and the more likely it is that you will get your petition accepted.
No one wants their criminal records to be available to the public, so an order of non-disclosure can be very beneficial for certain Texas people. Contact the Goolsby Law Firm today to talk to one of our criminal defense attorneys about your case.
