Man’s expungement petition properly denied, COA rules

Because a Marion County man admitted to violating the terms of his probation twice, he cannot meet the requirements of the expungement statute, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday, so the trial court properly denied his petition to expunge his conviction.

Craig Alvey was on probation after pleading guilty to Class D felony possession of cocaine in 2007 when he admitted twice to violating the terms of his probation. He completed his sentence in September 2008. In September 2012, he successfully petitioned to have his Class D felony reduced to a misdemeanor conviction.

Alvey filed his petition for expungement of the Class A misdemeanor conviction July 2, 2013, but the trial court denied it after finding he did not successfully complete his sentence.

“The fact that, here, Alvey later successfully completed his sentence in Community Corrections does not negate the fact that he had already violated the terms of his probation. As we explained in Pittman, we think that the intent of the General Assembly, as expressed by this statutory language, was to allow those persons who had successfully completed their sentences without incident to petition the court after the passage of a certain amount of time (here, five years) to expunge the records of their conviction. Here, however, Alvey admittedly violated the terms of his probation twice, and he therefore cannot meet all of the requirements of the expungement statute,” Judge Paul Mathias wrote in Craig Alvey v. State of Indiana, 20A04-1310-MI-533.