Outside Colorado · Rules v2026.3, current through July 1, 2026
Your case was federal, or in another state
Unburdened reads one statute closely: Colorado's. If your case was handled in another state, or in federal court, we cannot tell you whether your record can be cleared, and we would rather you read that in the first line than find it out after twenty minutes of typing.
What follows is the little we can say accurately, and who can say the rest. Every claim on this page has a government source or a court's own words behind it, and where we could not verify something we say so instead of filling the gap.
If your case was in another state
That state's own law decides it, and the differences are not small: what a record has to be, how long you wait, which offenses are shut out and whether anything happens automatically all change at the state line. We are not going to summarise 49 statutes we have not read.
There is one place we think is worth your time. The Restoration of Rights Project keeps a profile of every state's record-relief law, each one carrying its own last-updated date. It is maintained by the Collateral Consequences Resource Center, a nonprofit research group — not a law firm, and not one of the sites that collects your details and sells them on as a lead.
For a case in another state
- Restoration of Rights Project — the 50-state mapClick your state, then read its "Expungement, sealing & other record relief" section. Collateral Consequences Resource Center. In English only.
- LawHelp.orgA nonprofit directory that routes by state to local legal-aid offices. Use it to find a person to talk to, not to answer the eligibility question.
Neither of those will tell you whether you personally qualify. They tell you what your state's law says. That is the same division of labour a Colorado court self-help desk works under, and it is worth knowing before you call one.
If your case was federal
Federal court is a separate system, and Colorado's sealing statute does not reach into it. The short answer you will find everywhere — "federal convictions cannot be expunged" — is close to true and leaves out the parts that matter. Here is the accurate version.
- There is no general federal statute that lets a court clear a federal conviction because enough time has passed or because your life has changed. The Justice Department told the Supreme Court as much in its own brief: no federal statute authorizes a district court to expunge criminal records on those grounds. There is no federal equivalent of Colorado's automatic sealing either. Bills have been introduced; none has become law.
- One narrow federal expungement statute is real. 18 U.S.C. § 3607(c) covers a person who was found guilty of simple drug possession, who was under 21 at the time of the offense, and who completed the pre-judgment probation track without a conviction ever being entered. For that group the court shall order the record expunged. It covers nobody else — not someone over 21 at the time, not someone with a prior drug conviction, not any other offense.
- A presidential pardon is real relief and is what the federal courts themselves point people toward. It is administered by the Justice Department's Office of the Pardon Attorney. A pardon does not erase the record of the conviction.
- A federal arrest that did not end in a conviction is a different question with a better answer. Where a case was dismissed or you were acquitted, federal courts have long recognised their own authority to restrict or clear the arrest record even with no statute on point — the Second Circuit said so in 2016, noting the D.C. and Tenth Circuits had reached the same result.
- Clearing a valid federal conviction on fairness grounds alone is the part people are told wrongly in both directions. Every federal appeals court to squarely revisit it since 1994 has held it has no jurisdiction to do it: the First, Second, Third, Sixth, Eighth and Ninth Circuits. Two older decisions are sometimes read the other way, and the Justice Department itself argues their continuing force is questionable. So: not "the circuits are split", and not "no court could ever" — but you should not plan around it.
- Separately from any of that, the FBI runs its own free process to challenge what is on your Identity History Summary, the file most people call a rap sheet. It takes about 45 days on average. The FBI's own page is blunt about the limit: federal arrest data comes off that file at the submitting agency's request, or on a federal court order that specifically says expungement.
For a federal case
- Office of the Pardon Attorney, U.S. Department of JusticeHow clemency works, who may apply, and how to check the status of a petition already filed.
- FBI — request and challenge your Identity History SummaryGet your own federal record, then use the same page's challenge process to correct it. Free. The procedure is set by 28 CFR 16.30–16.34.
- Find the federal defender for the district your case was inThe federal judiciary's own directory. If you had appointed counsel, that office is the cheapest expert on your own case and often still has the file.
- What a federal court itself tells people who askThe U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi answers this question on its own FAQ, including who may apply for a pardon and after how long.
What we have deliberately not written
We checked more than is on this page and threw some of it out. There are no filing fees, deadlines or step-by-step pardon instructions here: we confirmed those processes exist and where they live, but not closely enough to publish as instructions someone would act on. We have not named which older appeals courts are read as allowing more than the rest, because we read the Justice Department's description of those rulings and not the rulings. And if you find 18 U.S.C. § 5021, the old youth set-aside, written up somewhere as an option — it was repealed in 1984.
This is the same standard the rest of the site is held to, and you can audit it. Our Colorado rules are published in full, doubts included, on the Rules page.
Common questions
My case was in Colorado but I live somewhere else now. Can you help me?
Yes. Where you live now does not matter. A motion to seal goes back to the Colorado court that entered the judgment, whatever state you moved to, and Colorado allows remote appearances in sealing matters. Use the Check.
Some of my cases are Colorado and one is federal. What then?
We can answer the Colorado ones and only those. Enter the Colorado cases in the Check and leave the federal case out of it, because putting it in would give you an answer that reads the wrong statute. The federal case needs the sources above.
Was my case federal or state? I am not sure.
The case number and the court name on your paperwork say which. A federal case was prosecuted by a United States Attorney in a United States District Court; a Colorado case was prosecuted by a district attorney in a county or district court. If you cannot find the paperwork, the federal defender's office for that district, or the Colorado court clerk, can tell you which system holds your file.
Will Unburdened cover my state later?
We have no date and we are not going to invent one. Colorado is the one statute we can read closely enough to publish the whole engine and stand behind every row of it, and doing that badly for a second state would be worse than not doing it. If you tell us which state you are in, that is genuinely useful to us — write to the address in the footer.
Unburdened is not a law firm. This is legal information, not legal advice.