AN ACT to amend Tennessee Code Annotated, Title 39 and Title 40, relative to criminal history records.
Summary
SB2380 creates a new process allowing certain people convicted of misdemeanor offenses, and certain older offenses that would now be misdemeanors, to petition the convicting court to seal their criminal history records. To qualify, a person must have completed all sentence requirements, paid fines and costs, finished any incarceration or supervision, be free of pending charges, and remain conviction-free for at least five years. The bill excludes domestic assault and DUI convictions from eligibility.
If a petition is granted, the records are sealed from public records requests, but they remain available for limited government uses. Those uses include firearm transaction and handgun carry permit background checks, maintenance of the vulnerable persons abuse registry, and law-enforcement certification screening by POST. The bill also requires a $500 filing fee to help offset the cost of sealing records and provides a mechanism to unseal records if the person is later charged with and convicted of a new non-traffic offense.
Impact
The bill would add a new part to Tennessee Code Annotated Title 40 governing sealing of criminal history records, creating a statutory pathway for misdemeanor record sealing in Tennessee. It would affect courts, clerks, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, the Department of Health, and the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission by preserving access to sealed records for specified public-safety and licensing purposes while limiting public access. It would also establish eligibility standards, ineligible offenses, a filing fee, and procedures for rescinding and reinstating sealing orders based on later criminal charges.
Sentiment
The bill appears generally reform-oriented and aimed at giving people with older or lower-level convictions a chance to reduce the public impact of their records after a substantial crime-free period. Because there are no committee transcripts or recorded votes provided, there is no direct evidence of debate or formal support/opposition in the available materials. The structure of the bill suggests an attempt to balance second-chance relief with public-safety exceptions.
Contention
The main points of potential contention are the scope of eligibility, the exclusion of domestic assault and DUI offenses, and the $500 fee, which could be viewed as a barrier for lower-income petitioners. Another likely issue is the retention of access for law-enforcement, firearms, health-registry, and POST purposes, which reflects a compromise between record sealing and public-safety oversight. The five-year conviction-free waiting period and automatic unsealing upon a new conviction may also be debated as either appropriate safeguards or overly restrictive conditions.