Sunset clouds over the Teton Range reflected at Schwabacher Landing, Grand Teton National Park — Schwabacher Landing at sunset · Grand Teton National Park · Photograph: Aaron Herzberg

Expungement · W.S. §§ 7-13-1401 and 7-13-1501

Wyoming expungement: clearing an arrest or a misdemeanor from your record.

A Wyoming record follows you into every job application, lease, and licensing form in this valley, and the state lets you clear it only once. Wyoming courts expunge three kinds of record: an arrest that never became a conviction, a misdemeanor conviction after a waiting period, and a small class of felonies after a longer one. I pull the record first, pick the right statute, and file a petition exact enough to be granted on the papers. The relief is real and narrower than the word suggests: it reclassifies the record and seals the court file. It does not rewrite history.

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40 E Simpson Ave, Jackson, two blocks from the courts

Do not

File the wrong petition first.

You get one misdemeanor expungement in a lifetime. Pull the DCI record and the docket before anything is filed; the disposition decides which statute applies, or whether any does.

Call or text me. Clients get my cell number from day one, and I answer. Just been arrested or charged? Here's what happens next.

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Three things the word means here.

A classification, not an eraser.

The statute defines expungement as "only the classification of the record" at the Division of Criminal Investigation, so it goes only to criminal justice agencies (W.S. § 7-13-1401(j)(i)). The court seals its file. Employers running a Wyoming check stop seeing it; police and courts still do.

Three statutes, three doors.

Arrests and charges that ended without a conviction (W.S. § 7-13-1401). Misdemeanor convictions (W.S. § 7-13-1501). A limited set of felonies (W.S. § 7-13-1502). Each has its own waiting period, fee, and exclusions, and each is a petition to the court where the case was heard.

What it does not touch.

Newspaper articles, investigative files, the driving record the Department of Transportation keeps under its own statutes, data brokers who copied the docket, federal records such as the FBI's identity history file, and any federal case. Only Wyoming crimes can be expunged by a Wyoming court.

Who qualifies, and when.

The waiting periods are floors, the prosecutor and any victim have a right to be heard, and the court decides.

Count from the end of the sentence

The misdemeanor wait is five years from the expiration of the sentence, counting any probation and any program the court ordered, not from the plea. Until July 1, 2015, the statute reached only simple assault, battery, reckless endangering, and breach of peace; that list was repealed, and since then DUI, possession, domestic battery, theft, and the rest have been eligible. The court grants the petition if you are eligible and do not "represent a substantial danger" to yourself, a victim, or society. One misdemeanor expungement is all a person gets.

Who is eligible, in outlineW.S. §§ 7-13-1401 to 1502

01Arrest, charge, or dismissal with no conviction: 180 days after the arrest or dismissal; no charges pending; no deferred disposition in the case; no filing fee
02Misdemeanor conviction: five years after sentence, probation, and any ordered program end (one year for a status offense); no firearm; $100 fee; once in a lifetime
03Felony conviction: ten years after sentence, program, and full restitution; no other felony; no firearm; violent, sexual, and other listed offenses excluded; $300 fee; once
04Deferred disposition under § 7-13-301 or § 35-7-1037 ending in dismissal: not a conviction for any purpose, and not expungeable

In outline only. The statute controls: the waiting periods are floors, the prosecutor and any victim have a right to be heard, and the court decides. Read the section that applies before counting on any line above.

A Jackson street in winter with Snow King behind — A record follows you around a small town; the statute lets some of it be sealed

How a petition is filed and decided.

Most petitions that are granted are granted on paper.

The record first. Your Wyoming criminal history from DCI and the court's docket say which statute applies, whether the waiting period has actually run, whether a deferral forecloses the arrest-record route, and whether a case in another county belongs in the one misdemeanor petition you will ever file.
The petition. Filed in the court that handled the case, verified under oath, served on the prosecutor and DCI. It has to be exact: the case number, the statute of conviction, the dates of sentence and discharge, and, for a felony, proof that restitution was paid.
The objection window. The prosecutor notifies any identifiable victim by certified mail and has twenty days to object for an arrest record, thirty for a misdemeanor, ninety for a felony. No objection, and the court may grant the petition on the papers; an objection means a hearing.
The order. When it is signed, the file is sealed, a certified copy goes to DCI, and the reclassification follows. Then the last step: confirming DCI has processed it, and going through which forms, federal and private, still ask the question anyway.

Tell me how the case ended and I will tell you which door. The call takes thirty minutes.

Have the case number, the court, and the date the case ended.

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The trap, and the special cases.

Deferred prosecutions, the three doors in detail, DUI, domestic battery and firearms, parks

Deferred prosecutions, and the record they leave behind

Wyoming's first-offender statutes are generous and their aftermath is misunderstood. Under W.S. § 7-13-301 a court may, with the consent of the defendant and the state, take a plea to most misdemeanors and many felonies, decline to enter a judgment of conviction, and place the person on probation for up to thirty-six months; if the terms are met, the case is dismissed, and the discharge "is not a conviction for any purpose." The controlled-substance version, W.S. § 35-7-1037, does the same for a first possession or use offense. The DUI and drug possession pages discuss when they are offered. What nobody mentions at the plea is the record. The same article of the code says that nothing in it "shall be construed to authorize the court to expunge the record" (W.S. § 7-13-307), and the arrest-record statute bars a petition where there was a deferred disposition "to any charge or charges as the result of the incident leading to the arrest." So the arrest, the charge, and the dismissal stay in the repository, visible on a Wyoming background check as a case dismissed after a deferral. None of that makes the deferral a bad choice. It makes it a choice to be made knowing what the record will say in ten years, before the plea.

The three doors, in detail

An order under the arrest-record statute carries a sentence the conviction statutes do not: the person "may respond to any inquiry as though the arrest, or charge or charges did not occur, unless otherwise provided by law." The misdemeanor statute excludes an offense involving the use or attempted use of a firearm and a health care provider convicted of abusing a patient. The felony statute excludes anyone with a second felony, any offense involving a firearm, and violent felonies, sexual offenses, child abuse, felony domestic battery, and a list of others; it also does one thing the misdemeanor statute does not: an expungement under it "shall restore any rights removed as a result of the conviction." In Teton County the petition goes to the Circuit Court for most misdemeanors and the District Court for felonies. At a hearing, "any person who has relevant information about the petitioner may testify."

DUI

Nothing in the misdemeanor statute excludes a DUI, so a first-offense DUI can be expunged after the five-year wait. Two cautions. The driving record the Department of Transportation builds from the court's abstract under W.S. § 31-5-1214 is a different record under a different title, and I would not tell anyone it disappears. And the DUI statute counts prior convictions within ten years to raise the penalty for the next one; whether an expunged conviction still counts is a question I answer only after reading the current statute and case law. The DUI page covers the penalties and the license process.

Domestic battery

A misdemeanor domestic battery is eligible under the misdemeanor statute unless a firearm was used or attempted, and a felony domestic battery, the third-offense version, is expressly excluded from the felony statute. The complication is federal. Federal law bars anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing a firearm, and provides that a person "shall not be considered to have been convicted of such an offense" if "the conviction has been expunged or set aside," unless the expungement itself says the person may not possess firearms (18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(33)(B)(ii)). Whether Wyoming's records-reclassification is that kind of expungement is a question of federal law I do not treat as settled. The same federal rule governs a felony: an expunged conviction is not a conviction unless the order itself says the person may not possess firearms (18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20)), so how the order is worded matters. The domestic violence page covers the charge itself.

The national parks

A citation or arrest in Grand Teton or Yellowstone is a case in the United States District Court, and Wyoming's expungement statutes do not reach it: they speak of the convicting court and the state's repository, and the Judicial Branch says plainly that only Wyoming crimes can be expunged by a Wyoming court. There is no general federal expungement statute to fall back on. The page on park citations and criminal records explains what that means, and why the disposition in a park case has to be right the first time.

Asked about expungement in Wyoming.

Can a DUI be expunged in Wyoming?

A misdemeanor DUI is not excluded from the misdemeanor statute, so five years after the end of the sentence, including probation and any ordered program, a petition can be filed like any other. The DUI does not vanish everywhere. It reclassifies the record at the Division of Criminal Investigation and seals the court file; the driving record kept by the Department of Transportation is a different record, and the DUI law counts prior convictions within ten years for enhancement. Treat it as cleared for background checks; ask before assuming more.

How long do I have to wait to expunge a misdemeanor in Wyoming?

Five years from the expiration of the sentence, which includes any probation and the completion of any program the court ordered, not from the plea or the arrest. Someone sentenced in 2021 to a year of probation and a class finished in 2022 becomes eligible in 2027. Status offenses, conduct not criminal for an adult, wait one year. Arrest records with no conviction wait one hundred eighty days; eligible felonies wait ten years from the end of the sentence, any program, and payment of restitution in full.

Does expungement mean I can say I was never arrested or convicted?

It depends on which statute granted it and who is asking. The arrest-record statute says a person with an expungement order may respond to any inquiry as though the arrest or charge did not occur, unless another law provides otherwise. The conviction statutes have no such sentence; they reclassify the record and seal the file, and the Judicial Branch says you need not disclose it to employers. Federal security-clearance forms and some licensing applications ask their own questions, several of which reach expunged records. Answer the question actually asked.

How much does a Wyoming expungement cost?

The court's filing fee is set by statute: nothing for an arrest record with no conviction, one hundred dollars for a misdemeanor conviction, three hundred dollars for a felony. Beyond that there is a copy of your Wyoming criminal history from the Division of Criminal Investigation, which I want before anything is filed, and my fee, which depends on whether the petition is likely to be contested. Because a person gets one expungement of misdemeanor convictions in a lifetime, the expensive mistake is filing the wrong petition first.

I finished a deferred prosecution and the case was dismissed. Is my record clean?

Better than a conviction, and not clean. A dismissal after probation under the first-offender statute is, in its words, not a conviction for any purpose, and you can say so. But the same article says nothing in it authorizes expungement, and the arrest-record statute bars a petition where the incident ended in a deferred disposition. So the arrest, the charge, and the dismissal remain in the state repository and can appear on a Wyoming background check as a dismissed case. Know that before accepting one.

Will expungement restore my gun rights?

For a felony, the statute answers directly: an expungement under it restores any rights removed by the conviction. For a misdemeanor, the statute says nothing about rights, and the question that matters most, whether a Wyoming expungement of a domestic battery lifts the federal firearms prohibition, is a question of federal law. The federal definition excludes convictions that have been expunged or set aside unless the expungement says otherwise, but whether Wyoming's records-reclassification is that kind of expungement is not something to rely on from a website.