Sealing a Criminal Record in New York

Can a criminal record be expunged in New York?

Almost never. New York has no general expungement statute. What it has is sealing, which hides a record from most public view while leaving it intact and visible to a defined list of agencies. The only true expungement in New York is the marijuana relief created when cannabis was legalized. Everything else, including the Clean Slate Act, is sealing.

That distinction is not pedantic. A sealed conviction still counts as a predicate if you are charged again, still has to be disclosed on some license applications, and is still visible to immigration authorities. People who are told their record was erased are frequently surprised later.

What is the Clean Slate Act?

The Clean Slate Act added CPL 160.57, which seals eligible convictions automatically, with no application and no lawyer. It was signed on 16 November 2023 as Chapter 631 of the Laws of 2023 and took effect one year later, on 16 November 2024.

The Office of Court Administration has to work through the backlog of older convictions and must finish no later than 16 November 2027. If your conviction is eligible and has not sealed yet, that is usually the reason. The statute also provides a form you or your attorney can submit where sealing should have happened and did not, and the record must then be sealed within thirty days.

How long is the Clean Slate waiting period?

Conviction	Waiting period	When the clock starts
Misdemeanor	3 years	Release from incarceration, or sentencing if there was none
Felony	8 years	Last release from incarceration on that sentence, or sentencing if there was none
DWAI, VTL 1192(1)	3 years	Sealed under its own provision, CPL 160.57(1)(a)

A later conviction resets the earlier one. If you pick up a new crime before an older conviction seals, the older conviction starts its clock on the same date as the new one. Two convictions eight years apart do not seal eight years apart.

Four other conditions have to hold: no criminal charge pending in New York, no current probation or parole supervision on that conviction, the conviction is not a sex offense or sexually violent offense under Correction Law 168-a, and it is not a class A felony other than a drug felony under Penal Law article 220.

What does Clean Slate not do?

More than most people expect.

• It does not touch your DMV record. CPL 160.57(3)(b) says so expressly. A driving record is a separate system, and sealing a criminal conviction does not clean it.
• It seals nothing while you are still serving. No sealing before a sentence, parole, probation or post-release supervision ends.
• It does not cancel an order of protection issued in connection with the case.
• It does not wipe out restitution, fines or surcharges you still owe.
• A sealed conviction is still a predicate. It counts in any later proceeding where a prior conviction raises the penalty or is an element of the charge.

One protection is worth knowing. You cannot be made to give up Clean Slate eligibility. Any waiver signed as part of a plea is void and unenforceable by statute.

What is CPL 160.59 sealing?

CPL 160.59 is the older route: a discretionary application to a judge, available since 2017. It still matters, because it reaches convictions the Clean Slate Act does not, and because a judge can grant it even where the automatic track never will.

The limits are strict. You may seal no more than two eligible offenses, and no more than one of them may be a felony. At least ten years must have passed since sentencing on your most recent conviction, or since your latest release from incarceration. Time spent incarcerated after the conviction does not count toward the ten years and extends the period by the same amount.

Which convictions are eligible under CPL 160.59?

The statute defines an eligible offense as any crime under New York law except those on a specific list. The exclusions are:

Excluded	Authority
Sex offenses	Penal Law article 130
Sexual performance by a child offenses	Penal Law article 263
Any homicide felony	Penal Law article 125
Violent felony offenses	Penal Law 70.02
Any class A felony	Penal Law
Conspiracy where the underlying offense is ineligible	Penal Law article 105
A felony attempt at an ineligible offense	Penal Law article 110
Anything requiring sex offender registration	Correction Law article 6-C

Note what is not on that list. No Vehicle and Traffic Law offense is excluded, so a misdemeanor or felony DWI conviction under VTL 1192(2) or 1192(3) is an eligible offense as the section is written, subject to the ten year wait and the two conviction cap. A good deal of published material states the opposite. What genuinely falls outside 160.59 is DWAI under VTL 1192(1), because a traffic infraction is not a crime and 160.59 reaches crimes. DWAI is instead covered by the Clean Slate Act after three years.

What does a CPL 160.59 application involve?

It goes to the judge who sentenced you, or to the County or Supreme Court if you are sealing more than one conviction. You file a certificate of disposition for every conviction you have, a sworn statement of what you want sealed, and a sworn statement of why the court should exercise its discretion in your favor. That last document is the application. The rest is paperwork.

The district attorney is served and has forty five days to object. If the People object, the court must hold a hearing. If they do not object, no hearing is required.

Some applications never reach the merits. The court must summarily deny where you are required to register as a sex offender, where you have an undisposed charge pending, where you were convicted of any crime after the conviction you want sealed, where the ten years have not run, or where you have two or more felonies or more than two crimes.

On the merits the factors are rehabilitation-focused: time elapsed, the seriousness of the offense, your character and what you have done since, any statement from the victim, the effect of sealing on your reentry, and the effect on public safety and on public confidence in the law.

Who can still see a sealed record?

Sealing is not invisibility. Under both statutes the record stays available to you and your attorney, to law enforcement and qualified agencies acting within their duties, to firearm licensing authorities and the federal background check system, and to prospective employers of police and peace officers.

Clean Slate adds a longer list, including courts and prosecutors in a pending case, the State Education Department for licensing and professional misconduct in the listed professions, entities required by law to run fingerprint checks for work with children, elderly people or other vulnerable populations, and transportation network companies. There is a protection running the other way as well: a sealed conviction generally cannot be used as evidence of negligence against an employer or landlord who was never given the record.

How do New York sealing statutes compare?

Provision	What it covers	Application needed
CPL 160.50	Cases terminated in your favor: dismissal, acquittal, a completed ACD	No, automatic
CPL 160.55	Convictions for a non-criminal violation, such as disorderly conduct	No, automatic and partial
CPL 160.58	Conditional sealing after judicial diversion on drug and specified offenses	Yes
CPL 160.59	Up to two convictions, one felony, after ten years	Yes, discretionary
CPL 160.57	Clean Slate automatic sealing at 3 or 8 years	No, automatic

The most common confusion is between 160.50 and the conviction statutes. A case that ended in your favor was already sealed automatically, and a completed adjournment in contemplation of dismissal is in that category. You do not need CPL 160.59 for it.

Where do you file in Nassau County?

A CPL 160.59 application goes back to the court that sentenced you. For most misdemeanor convictions in Nassau County that is Nassau County District Court at 99 Main Street in Hempstead, or Glen Cove or Long Beach City Court if the case began there. Felony convictions go back to Nassau County Court at 262 Old Country Road in Mineola, and in some matters to Supreme Court, Nassau County.

Where you are sealing more than one conviction, the application is assigned to the County Court or Supreme Court of the county where the criminal court sits rather than to your original sentencing judge. The Nassau County District Attorney is served either way and has forty five days to respond.

Clean Slate requires nothing from you, in Nassau County or anywhere else. It happens centrally. The practical step, if you believe a conviction should have sealed and has not, is to pull your own record and check rather than assume.

Related: sealing a DWI conviction, adjournments in contemplation of dismissal, youthful offender adjudication, and criminal defense in Nassau County.