Legal Question in Criminal Law in Texas

I was never arrested but an arresting agency filed charges against me and now i have a misdeameanor on my record and i dont even know what company did this? Now it has been 6 years and i am having a hard time getting a job as a result of it. What can i do?


Asked on 10/25/11, 11:27 am

2 Answers from Attorneys

M. Elizabeth Foley The Law Office of M. Elizabeth Foley

I'm not sure what the circumstances of this case were, and the answer would depend on that. Six years after an offense is four years too late to file a misdemeanor case against you (unless you've been living out of state at least four of those years), so even if a warrant was put out on you at sone point, if a case was not been filed against you in a county court in the county the offense occurred in within the first two years, one cannot be filed now. If that's the case, you can now get the offense expunged. I've handled a lot of expunctions and you're welcome to contact me about how that would work, but basically you'd have to file a civil case asking a district court to order all the agencies with records of the case to destroy them, which would fix your background check issues.

If, on the other hand, a case did get filed in the two years after the offense, but fell through the cracks, or you've still got a warrant, or you just finally got arrested and have a court date coming up now, then you'll need to deal with the case before anything can be done about your record. Honestly, it's pretty hard to prosecute any case that old, despite all the "cold case" stuff you see on TV, and while there are no guarantees, the odds are good that a misdemeanor case that old would end up getting dropped eventually. If the case were to be dismissed, you could then get it expunged just like if it had never been filed at all. Good luck!

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Answered on 10/25/11, 11:43 am
M. Elizabeth Foley The Law Office of M. Elizabeth Foley

I just went back and read your question gain and saw the reference to "company", which I misread the first time as "county". On the off chance this is a hot check case, those do work a little differently sometimes, and just to make sure you understand this, a dismissal is not automatic on those, and if there's any question in your mind as to whether you actually got the case dismissed or have a conviction, you need to find that out first (especially in JP and municipal courts, it can be difficult to understand their procedures sometimes, though those cases don't normally appear on background checks). If you were convicted, though, you would not be eligible for an expunction.

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Answered on 10/25/11, 11:55 am


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