Generally, felonies in Oklahoma will stay on your record forever, unless you hire an attorney to expunge it.

To be more specific, your expungement remedies will depend on what kind of felony you had. In Oklahoma, felonies come in three different flavors: felony convictions, felony deferred sentences, and felony exonerations.

• If you had a felony conviction, where you served time, or were given a type of probation called a “suspended sentence”, then your felony will stay on your record forever. You need to hire an attorney to expunge your record and restore your civil rights.

• If you had a felony deferred sentence, then it’s a little more complicated. If you successfully complete the deferred sentence, then your case was dismissed by operation of law. However, a dismissal isn’t an expungement, and a dismissal doesn’t actually mean that the deferred sentence has been removed from your record: it will still show up, even though you did everything you were supposed to do. Additionally, some counties will enter formal orders of dismissal, but others don't; and some counties will even partially expunge the record, if you come back to court and ask, or if you talk to your local District Attorney. If you are unsure how much of your deferred sentence has been removed from your record, we recommend you hire an attorney to make sure it gets completely removed.

• If you were exonerated - i.e. if charges were never filed, if the charges were dismissed by the District Attorney, if you were acquitted by a jury, or if you were able to prove your innocence by DNA or some other type of evidence - then you will still have a felony record forever. We know that this isn’t fair, but the way Oklahoma law is written, you still need to hire an attorney to get your exoneration expunged.

To give you an example of how this works: one of the saddest cases I ever worked was for a young woman who had recently been turned down for a job at McDonald’s, after a string of other job rejections. She had the credentials for the job, and already had experience in the restaurant industry, and she had interviewed well. When she got the call from McDonalds, they told her that they were sorry, but that they couldn’t hire her. On the phone, they didn’t provide a reason.

She went back to McDonalds, in tears, and asked the hiring manager to please explain what happened. She recalled that he looked her straight in the eye and told her that “we don’t hire murderers here”.

She had never been in trouble in her entire life, so she hired our office to figure out what had happened. We discovered that she had been taken downtown by local law enforcement for questioning when she was a young woman, because of a murder that someone else had committed in her neighborhood. After the police interview, they figured out she had nothing to do with the murder, and she was released.

Despite releasing her, law enforcement still made an entry about the interview on her background check (which, by the way, they are lawfully required to do). When McDonald’s pulled her background, they saw the murder “arrest”, understandably freaked out, and turned her down for the job.

Ultimately, we were able to have the murder arrest completely removed from her record and she never had to deal with it again. She was able to get a better job and move onto a satisfying career in a different industry. However, while this story is heart-breaking, it also serves as a warning - if you’ve ever had an interaction with law enforcement, or if you are having trouble in your job search, then it is worth your time and your money to make sure that you don’t have any outstanding problems on your background check. You never know what you’ll find.

Be careful out there.
Best, MAR