South Carolina record expungement

South Carolina law allows for some convictions to be removed from your record through an expungement. Listed below are the how-to-do list and list of requirements to get your record expunged.

To be eligible for an expungement you can only be charged with a criminal offense and the charge has to be dismissed, or you are found not guilty, or if you wrote a bad check and it was your first offense and a year has passed. Also if it has been more than three years since the conviction resulting in no more than thirty days imprisonment or a fine of $500 or both, and being this was your first conviction, and you must be referred to, and totally finish their alcohol education program.

You can apply if you were convicted and sentenced as a juvenile, and this was a first offense, plus five years have not passed since the conviction, and a motor vehicle was not involved in the crime. For adults, violent or domestic violence crimes are excluded, and you have to have a clean record for 15 years, you can't have a prior expungement. If you had marijuana or hash, you must be under 25 to apply for expungement, and if you have show the circuit court that you successfully complied with the terms of the sentence and you followed the rules for expungement. Class I or class II narcotic convictions can't apply for expungement.

Also, if five years have passed since you completed a sentence imposed as a juvenile for a non-violent crime and you are now 18 years of age, you have never been charged with a previous crime that would have carried 5 or more years if you had been charged as an adult, you have successfully completed all of the terms of your imposed sentence, and you have not been charged with any other crime since your conviction.

You can contact a lawayer or do it yourself. You need a copy of your warrant number, arrest date, and case disposition, and $250 to start the process. Bring these things to the expungement office in the Solicitor's Office in the county where you were charged or convicted and they will help you with everything. File everything to the clerk of courts, in which they charge an additional $35, unless you were not convicted. You must send a legal copy of the expungement to SLED to make your record clean. They will send this info to the FBI. You will get charged another $25 unless you were found not guilty. Once the State Law Enforcement Division receives your petition for expungement, it will generally take up to 3 weeks to get rid of your charge.