Pardons or Expulsions of Maine State Criminal Convictions (updated in 2024)

I have assisted hundreds (and perhaps thousands) of accused criminals as lawyer of the day when they make their first appearances in court. Many people decline to receive any advice from the lawyer of the day and instead take plea agreements in which they are convicted of misdemeanor-level offenses with a recommended sentence – usually a fine, sometimes a short jail term for a lesser offense – without any trial or even the involvement of a defense attorney.

This post is not about the wisdom (or lack thereof) that guides such a decision. Rather, because a good number of defendants ask me about eventual “expungements” (or a similar term) of convictions before they accept plea offers from the prosecution, I want to point out the difficulty of obtaining such a result after a Maine state court conviction.

Other jurisdictions offer some convicted criminals a chance to get their convictions removed from the records of criminal convictions or treated as though they resulted in acquittals. These are generally for relatively minor crimes and require the passage of a significant number of years without another conviction. New Hampshire, for example, offers a mechanism called annulment. Since I wrote this blog post originally (in 2017), Maine has enacted a statutory mechanism to get a criminal conviction sealed under Title 15, sections 2261 to 2269. But if you read the the requirements for eligibility you should notice that it is a narrowly available remedy: for example, the conviction has to involve conduct that occurred between the ages of 18 and 28, and the person cannot have any other conviction since then.

Maine also has executive clemency, sometimes referred to as the governor’s pardon power, and certain provisions for juvenile records. So, if someone who has been convicted in a Maine state court of any adult crime wants a clean slate, he or she usually must petition the governor for clemency.

This is no small task, as maybe a dozen pardons are granted per year in a state with thousands of criminal convictions per year.

 I’m no mathematician, but I’m confident that means fewer than 1% of Maine convictions are forgiven.

In my opinion, this state needs an additional avenue for relief so that a mistake doesn’t always haunt someone for life. But for now I must advise anyone charged with a crime in Maine to assume that a conviction will remain on record forever.