Georgia: Adult Conviction Expungement and Record-Sealing Eligibility

Requirements one by one

Relief name and legal effect

Georgia calls the ordinary remedy record restriction, not expungement.
Restriction stops the criminal-history record from being disseminated to
ordinary private persons and businesses or to governmental and licensing
agencies through the general dissemination statutes. Judicial officials and
criminal-justice agencies retain the access that § 35-3-37 permits.

Court records require a second step. After the criminal-history record is
restricted, the person may petition for an order making the clerk's records and
indices unavailable to the public. Neither restriction nor sealing destroys the
record, reverses the conviction, or makes the underlying case legally disappear.

Automatic or clean-slate relief

Georgia has no general automatic system that clears adult convictions. The
ordinary misdemeanor route requires a petition to the court of conviction and a
separate clerk-record sealing request.

Effective July 1, 2026, Act 403 requires restriction and sealing when a court
uses the First Offender Act. That protection begins at sentencing and remains
unless the court revokes First Offender status and adjudicates guilt. At
successful discharge, the court records are restricted without a new
application for sentences governed by the new law. This is an important
alternative, but it is not automatic clearing of a conviction: § 42-8-60
defers adjudication without entering a judgment of guilt, and successful
discharge means the person is not considered convicted.

Convictions eligible by petition

The general petition route covers a Georgia misdemeanor or a series of
misdemeanors arising from one incident, unless an offense appears in the
statutory exclusion list. Counts charged separately but consolidated for trial
are treated as one conviction for the lifetime cap.

A person may request this relief for at most two misdemeanor convictions or
single-incident misdemeanor series over a lifetime. Georgia separately permits
a petition for a qualifying pardoned conviction, and special trafficking-victim
relief exists, but those are not the ordinary misdemeanor route.

Excluded offenses and statuses

O.C.G.A. § 35-3-37(j)(4)(B) excludes the listed family-violence assault, battery,
stalking, and order-violation offenses, subject to the youthful-offender
exceptions for specified assault and battery offenses. It also excludes the
listed child and sexual offenses, public indecency, specified prostitution
offenses, emergency-call obstruction, Peeping Tom offenses, offenses related to
minors, most theft offenses, and serious traffic offenses. Misdemeanor
shoplifting and refund fraud are exceptions to the theft exclusion.

The ordinary route also fails if the sentence is incomplete, the person has a
pending charged offense, the four-year conviction-free condition is not met, or
the lifetime two-incident limit has been exhausted.

Waiting period and when it starts

Georgia's general conviction rule is not a set number of years after sentence
completion. Two separate conditions must both be true:

• the person has completed the sentence; and
• during the four years immediately before filing, the person has not been
  convicted of a crime in any jurisdiction, excluding a nonserious traffic
  offense.

A new disqualifying conviction therefore prevents the four-year lookback from
being satisfied. If a court denies relief for the same misdemeanor record, the
person may petition again after two years from the prior final order.

Sentence, restitution, and new-record conditions

All terms of the sentence must be complete. If restitution, fines, probation,
community service, or another obligation is part of that sentence, it must be
completed as part of the sentence-completion requirement. Section
35-3-37(j)(4) does not add a separately worded universal restitution condition.

The person must also have no pending charged offense and must satisfy the
four-year conviction-free condition described above.

Petition process and decision standard

File in the court where the misdemeanor conviction occurred and serve the
prosecuting attorney. If a hearing is requested, it must be held within 90 days
after filing. The court hears evidence and must grant record restriction when it
finds that the harm to the person clearly outweighs the public's interest in the
record remaining publicly available.

Restriction does not itself seal the clerk's file. The person then petitions the
court with original jurisdiction for sealing. The clerk and prosecutor receive
notice, and the court applies a preponderance standard: the record must already
be restricted, and the privacy harm must clearly outweigh the public-access
interest. The clerk has 60 days after the order to restrict every physical and
electronic document in its control.

Who can still see or use the record

Record restriction blocks the ordinary public, private-business, governmental,
and licensing dissemination channels named in § 35-3-37(a)(6). It does not
eliminate judicial or criminal-justice access.

Restricted and sealed information remains available for specified criminal
proceedings, prosecutors and public defenders, the Judicial Qualifications
Commission, court orders, and the person who is the subject of the record. A
court may order relevant restricted information disclosed to parties in a civil
case with limits on further publication. Federal disclosure requirements and
specified employment or public-office consequences can also remain.

Boundaries and alternative relief

The First Offender Act is the nearest broad alternative for a person who has not
previously been convicted of a felony and whose offense is not excluded. It must
be used at or retroactively connected to sentencing under its own rules, is
available only once, and can be revoked if the person violates the sentence or
is convicted of another crime during it. Successful discharge is not a
conviction and, under Act 403, First Offender records are automatically
restricted and sealed under the new timing rules.

Conditional discharge, nonconviction restriction, pardons, trafficking-victim
vacatur or restriction, juvenile records, and federal convictions follow
separate statutes and are outside this general conviction survey.

What trips people up

Georgia restriction is not destruction. The public and ordinary background
channels lose access, but the record remains available for listed judicial,
criminal-justice, federal-law, and other purposes.

The four years are a conviction-free lookback, not a post-sentence clock.
Sentence completion is required separately. A person can satisfy one condition
without yet satisfying the other.

First Offender automation is not general conviction Clean Slate. It protects
a deferred-adjudication disposition that can end without any adjudication of
guilt; if the status is revoked and guilt is adjudicated, the restriction and
sealing are removed.

Common questions

Can an ordinary felony conviction be restricted under the general route?
No. Section 35-3-37(j)(4) is a misdemeanor route. A pardoned conviction and a
trafficking-related conviction have separate, narrower petition provisions.

Can more than one misdemeanor count be treated as one conviction? Yes.
Multiple counts consolidated for trial are treated as one conviction for the
two-conviction lifetime cap.

Does restriction automatically seal the courthouse file? No. The person
must separately petition under § 35-3-37(m), and the court must make the
statutory preponderance findings.

Statutes and sources

• O.C.G.A. § 35-3-37(a)(6), (j)(4), (m), and (t)–(v) — restriction effect,
  misdemeanor eligibility, exclusions, four-year conviction-free condition,
  lifetime cap, petition standard, clerk sealing, and retained access.
  https://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20192020/193207
  (accessed 2026-07-19)
• O.C.G.A. § 42-8-60(a), (e), (i), and (l) — First Offender deferred
  adjudication, discharge, no-conviction effect, and one-use limit.
  https://unicourt.github.io/cic-code-ga/transforms/ga/ocga/r72/gov.ga.ocga.title.42.html
  (accessed 2026-07-19)
• O.C.G.A. §§ 42-8-62.1 and 42-8-62.2, as enacted by 2026 Georgia Act 403 —
  mandatory First Offender restriction and sealing at sentencing and discharge,
  retained access, and removal after revocation/adjudication.
  https://www.legis.ga.gov/api/legislation/document/20252026/247114
  (accessed 2026-07-19)