Adult Conviction Expungement and Record-Sealing Eligibility in Michigan

At a glance

Requirements one by one

Relief name and legal effect

Michigan calls the remedy setting aside a conviction. Once a court order or automatic process sets aside the conviction, the person is generally considered not to have been previously convicted.

That rule has important exceptions. The state does not refund fines, costs, or other money already paid; restitution remains enforceable; registration duties can remain; and the conviction can still count for a later second-or-subsequent charge or habitual-offender sentence. MSP retains the arrest, fingerprints, conviction, sentence, and set-aside information in a nonpublic record.

Automatic or clean-slate relief

Michigan's automatic Clean Slate process has operated since April 11, 2023. The categories are:

• eligible misdemeanors punishable by no more than 92 days: no lifetime number limit, after seven years from sentence;
• eligible misdemeanors punishable by 93 days or more: up to four over a lifetime, after seven years from sentence; and
• eligible felonies: up to two over a lifetime, ten years after the later of sentence or completion of an MDOC imprisonment term.

For the longer misdemeanors and felonies, the MSP database must show no pending criminal charge and no new recorded conviction during the applicable seven- or ten-year period. Automatic relief has additional offense exclusions and can be reinstated if it was granted erroneously. A court may also reinstate it when an individual has not made a good-faith effort to pay ordered restitution.

Convictions eligible by petition

A person with no more than three counted Michigan felony convictions may apply to the convicting court to set aside all eligible Michigan convictions. The statute does not impose a general numerical limit on eligible misdemeanors.

No more than two assaultive-crime convictions may be set aside during the person's lifetime. If a felony offense is punishable by more than ten years, only one felony conviction for that same offense may be set aside.

The “one bad night” rule treats multiple felonies as one felony, or multiple misdemeanors as one misdemeanor, when they occurred within 24 hours and arose from the same transaction. It does not apply when one of those convictions is assaultive, involves a dangerous weapon, or carries a maximum of ten or more years.

Excluded offenses and statuses

Petition relief excludes life-maximum felonies and attempts; the listed child- abuse, child-sexual-abuse, criminal-sexual-conduct, and assault-with-intent offenses; most operating-while-intoxicated convictions; commercial-motor- vehicle violations; traffic offenses causing injury or death; a domestic- violence felony when the person has a prior domestic-violence misdemeanor; and the listed human-trafficking and terrorism chapters.

A first-violation OWI is a petition-only exception and may be granted only once. The reviewing court may consider rehabilitation or education and may deny the petition if not convinced that the person participated in or benefited from it.

Automatic relief is narrower for felonies and 93-day-or-longer misdemeanors. It also excludes assaultive crimes, serious misdemeanors, crimes of dishonesty, offenses punishable by at least ten years, specified crimes involving minors or vulnerable adults or injury, serious impairment, or death, and trafficking- related violations.

Waiting period and when it starts

Petition clocks run from the latest applicable event in the statute:

• more than one felony: seven years after sentence, felony-probation completion, parole discharge, or imprisonment completion;
• one felony, one or more serious misdemeanors, or one first-violation OWI: five years after sentence, probation completion, parole discharge when applicable, or imprisonment completion; and
• other nonserious, nonassaultive misdemeanors: three years after sentence, imprisonment completion, or probation completion.

An assaultive misdemeanor is expressly outside the three-year tier, so the offense classification should be checked rather than assuming every ordinary- looking misdemeanor uses three years. A denial ordinarily prevents refiling for the same conviction for three years unless the court permits an earlier date.

Automatic misdemeanor relief uses seven years from imposition of sentence. Automatic felony relief uses ten years from the later of sentence or completion of an MDOC imprisonment term.

Sentence, restitution, and new-record conditions

The applicable petition period must have elapsed, no criminal charge may be pending, and the person must have no new criminal conviction during that period. The relevant probation, parole, and imprisonment completion dates are part of the clock; the statute does not separately require full payment of every fine or cost before filing.

Setting aside a conviction does not cancel unpaid restitution or the court's power to enforce it. For an automatic set-aside, a person owed restitution—or the court on its own motion—may seek reinstatement when the person did not make a good-faith payment effort.

Petition process and decision standard

Apply in each convicting court using a sworn application with a certified record of each conviction, conviction and prior-application disclosures, pending-charge information, and consent to authorized nonpublic-record use. Send MSP a copy, one complete fingerprint set, and the $50 processing fee. MSP checks state and FBI records and reports to the court before it acts.

Serve the application on the Attorney General and every prosecutor who handled a conviction in the request. They may contest relief. For an assaultive crime or serious misdemeanor, the prosecutor notifies the victim, who may appear and make an oral or written statement.

At the hearing, the court may receive affidavits and proofs. Relief is discretionary: the court may grant it when the person's circumstances and behavior from conviction through filing warrant the set-aside and relief is consistent with public welfare. The statute calls set-aside a conditional privilege, not a right.

Who can still see or use the record

The ordinary public record becomes nonpublic, but MSP retains a statutory file. Specified courts, judicial-branch agencies, corrections, law enforcement, prosecutors, the Attorney General, and the Governor may obtain it for the enumerated purposes.

Those purposes include judicial-branch licensing, checking prior set-asides, sentencing for a later felony or offense punishable by more than one year, pardon decisions, corrections or law-enforcement employment, sex-offender- registration enforcement, and charging, plea-offer, and sentencing decisions. The person may obtain a copy for the statutory fee. The record is exempt from FOIA, but a set-aside is not a promise that every earlier private report or federal system has been corrected.

Boundaries and alternative relief

Michigan has separate application rules for misdemeanor marijuana convictions and qualifying trafficking-victim convictions. A first-violation OWI uses the general petition framework with special findings, is never automatic, and a set-aside order does not remove it from the Secretary of State driving record.

Juvenile adjudications, nonconviction records, pardons, federal convictions, tribal convictions, and out-of-state convictions follow different rules. Other jurisdictions' convictions can affect eligibility definitions even though a Michigan court cannot set those records aside.

What trips people up

Set-aside does not mean destruction. Michigan deliberately keeps a nonpublic criminal-justice record and authorizes later charging, sentencing, licensing, and employment uses.

Automatic eligibility is narrower than petition eligibility. Assaultive, serious, dishonesty, and other listed convictions can be excluded from automatic relief even when the petition statutes require a separate analysis.

The petition clock starts from the latest event. Sentence, probation, parole, and imprisonment dates can produce a later eligibility date than the conviction date alone suggests.

Common questions

Can Michigan set aside more than three felony counts? Sometimes the counted total can be lower than the raw count because qualifying same-transaction felonies within 24 hours are treated as one. Otherwise, a person with more than three counted felonies does not fit the general petition rule.

Does a person need to apply for an automatically eligible conviction? No. MSP and courts implement the automatic process. A person should still verify the record because database matching, an exclusion, a pending charge, a later conviction, or an erroneous set-aside/reinstatement can affect the result.

Does a set-aside eliminate restitution? No. Restitution remains owed and enforceable, and lack of good-faith payment can cause reinstatement of an automatic set-aside.

Statutes and sources

• MCL 780.621 and 780.621b — petition conviction counts, assaultive and repeat- serious-felony caps, definitions, and same-transaction counting. https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2023-2024/publicact/pdf/2023-PA-0205.pdf (accessed 2026-08-08)
• MCL 780.621c — excluded convictions and the first-OWI exception. https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2021-2022/publicact/pdf/2021-PA-0079.pdf (accessed 2026-08-08)
• MCL 780.621d — petition clocks, new-record conditions, application contents, fingerprints, fee, notice, victim participation, hearing, and discretion. https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2021-2022/publicact/pdf/2021-PA-0082.pdf (accessed 2026-08-08)
• MCL 780.621g–780.621h and 780.622–780.623 — automatic set-aside categories, limits, exclusions, reinstatement, legal effect, restitution, later-case use, and retained nonpublic access. https://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2019-2020/publicact/pdf/2020-PA-0193.pdf (accessed 2026-08-08)