Q: How to get an nolle prosequi off your record or fixed. I was charged with burglary of a occupied dwelling felony, charge several years ago & it still show up on my criminal record. It was bogus charge and ended up being dropped, but it still shows up whenever I look for an apartment. This is a huge issue & I do not know how to resolve it without hiring a lawyer. On the nolle prosequi it is checked hold for further court proceedings and or instruction. I cant get it expunged or sealed since I pleaded guilty of a WHOLE different charge 10 years ago.
A:
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Lawyers agree
Answered . Sealing is available in a case where you received a withhold of adjudication, and expunction is available in a case which was dismissed, nolle pros'd, no actioned or where you were found to have been not guilty. In Florida you can only seal or expunge one eligible (non-disqualified) offense in your lifetime.
Burglary of a dwelling is an excluded / disqualified offense for sealing, but if you got a nolle pros then you should nonetheless be able to expunge the dismissed charge and the arrest.
If you look at the following website you will learn everything you ever wanted to know about the sealing / expunction process:
http://www.fdle.state.fl.us/content/getdoc/c83dd888-ef7a-448e-9a96-ba69fc4181f7/Seal-and-Expunge-Home.aspx
The procedure is both quite detailed and somewhat painstaking but it is also far from being rocket science. You can attempt to navigate it yourself (FDLE has tried to simplify it - again I refer you to the website above) but, assuming your eligibility, any criminal defense lawyer (anywhere in Florida - this can be done remotely and does not necessarily require a local attorney, although a local attorney may or may not be less expensive) will be able to accomplish the task with greater ease and likely in a shorter time period.
That said I suspect that it doesn't much matter where you were arrested, what you were arrested for, what the final disposition was or whether or not you sealed / expunged the record. This is 2014 and we are forehead deep into the internet age, where nothing is private, sacred or truly hidden from public scrutiny.
Sadly, sealing (and expunging) only applies to certain (not even to all) government agencies and has no effect whatsoever on private (er, extortionist) enterprise, who compile and maintain arrest information and then demand that you pay them off to remove your information from their database and public access. Worse still, after you "buy back your information", then you can count on there being another private company lurking, somewhere, sometime, somehow, just waiting for you to pay them off as well. Its a seemingly never-ending vicious cycle.
For better or for worse you are probably best advised to take the wind out of the sails by admitting your past issues / indiscretions to your present (or potential) employer, landlord, etcetera, rather than waiting for them to find out on their own.
Although I practice primarily in Miami-Dade County you are welcome to contact my office to assist you with your sealing / expunction, or for a referral or two, or you can search either Avvo the Florida Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers website by locality (please see http://www.facdl.org/ - and click on the "Find A Lawyer" tab).
I hope that this has been helpful and wish you the best of luck!
First, second and third: No attorney-client relationship exists by virtue of any Q&A with Michael A. Haber, Esq. on Avvo. Fourth: Anything that you post on Avvo (or on similar sites) or on any social media is by its nature public. It is essentially an admission / confession and can be introduced into evidence as a statement against your interest in a subsequent legal proceeding. Once posted you lose any reasonable expectation of privacy, so, as this is an open forum (with no privilege attached), please be extra careful when considering what to post online (forewarned is forearmed.)
Since 1991 Michael A. Haber, P.A. has an unblemished record of providing boutique criminal defense litigation services to many folks who have been accused of criminality.
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