New Hampshire Expungement of Criminal Records

 

There is a very good reason that the United States federal government decided to allow the legal process of expungement – or the erasure of records from a person’s criminal history – in our country.

 

Criminal records were created with the intent to help law enforcement officials better track career criminals and punish them according to the accumulation of their offenses to combat recidivism and reduce crime overall. Unfortunately, a criminal record doesn’t discriminate between major or minor crimes, or between those people who have just made one regrettable mistake and repeat offenders – if you are arrested and charged with a crime, you will receive a criminal record.

 

If anything, this matters more to those people who are simply attempting to be normal, productive citizens, because those areas of life are where having a criminal record can have the biggest negative effect. Why? Because the way that people will learn about your record is through doing a background check on you, and the individuals and institutions most commonly using those checks are employers, landlords, banks, credit card companies, and organizations that provide professional licenses. And when any of them discover the arrest in your background, they will be far less likely to offer you service, hire you, or agree to allow you to be a tenant at their property.

 

With expungement, all of those problems are removed, because your record will show up blank whenever someone does a check, and you can legally tell people that you’ve never been arrested or charged.

 

New Hampshire Expungement: What is the process?

 

The federal government has given leeway to each state so that they can deal with record expungement as they see fit, and unfortunately New Hampshire is one of a very few states in our country that has no provision for expungement.

 

What New Hampshire does have, though, is a process called annulment of records. Only a select few individuals and types of crimes are eligible for this process, as there are very specific stipulations associated with it. Still, New Hampshire does allow annulments for arrests, convictions, and sentencing records.

 

To receive annulment, an eligible individual needs to petition the appropriate state officials. The court will then hold a hearing to decide whether or not annulment for this particular individual in this instance will help to rehabilitate him or her and is in favor of the court.

 

New Hampshire Expungement: Who is eligible?

 

To be eligible for record annulment in New Hampshire, an individual must fall into one of several categories set down by law in the state. Annulment is possible for:

 

• any arrested individual who was subsequently found not guilty, or whose case was dismissed or not prosecuted (he or she may petition for annulment at any time)
• any individual who has been convicted and completed all sentences, convictions, and terms, provided he or she has not been convicted of any other crime – excepting motor vehicle offenses classified as violations, other than driving under the influence – for certain legally defined time periods (including waiting 1 year after a violation, 3 years for a Class B Misdemeanor, 3 years for a Class A Misdemeanor, 5 years for a Class B Felony, 10 years for a Class A Felony, 10 years for sexual assault, and 10 years for an indecent exposure or lewdness felony)

 

New Hampshire Expungement: Annulment Denial

 

Just because a particular person and case are eligible for annulment does not mean that the court will approve the petition. In the event that an annulment petition is denied, a person may file a second petition for annulment after 3 more years have passed.

 

Annulment will not be given to any of the following crimes:

 

• violent crimes
• obstruction of justice
• any crime that carried with it an extended prison term

 

If annulment is sought for an individual who has been convicted of multiple offenses, the person must wait the required amount of time specified by law before they can submit a petition to the court, and the more convictions the individual has, the longer they will have to wait.

 

New Hampshire Expungement: Annulment Defined

 

Annulled records in New Hampshire share many similarities with expunged ones in other states. Once a record has been annulled, no one in the public will be granted access to it, nor will it be available for use in general law enforcement. The person with the annulled record may also legally say that their conviction, sentence, or arrest never happened.

 

The only time an annulled record may reappear under New Hampshire law is when the individual has committed another offense. If this happens, the annulled record will be counted as a prior offense and can cause the offender to face harsher penalties than if their current charge was a first offense.

 

Actual New Hampshire Expungement

 

While in general it is said that expungement does not exist in New Hampshire, this is not expressly true. Upon request, DNA records can be expunged, and two specific cases also allow actual expungement of records in the state: prowling and loitering. The arrest records for either of these may be expunged for an individual so long as he or she was not provided with the opportunity to explain the circumstances of the offense, or if the arrest is found unjustifiable due to a creditable explanation being offered. For all other crimes, annulment is used rather than expungement.

 

In the event of loitering or prowling convictions being reversed or dismissed, a petition for expungement does not need to be filed – the records will be expunged automatically. This is never the case in New Hampshire for annulment, where a petition must be filed for the court to even consider it.