Michigan Criminal Offenses – Having a Conviction “come off” your Record

However, the fact that a person was fingerprinted and booked does not go away, and the Court does not destroy or seal its’ file. Thus, there is a Public Record of this transaction, but the person winds up without a conviction. This can be a little problematic where someone has their record checked using fingerprints, because those remnants of the charge do not go away. For inquiries by name, however, no record of the conviction will turn up. And no matter what does or doesn’t turn up, the person can honestly claim that they have no conviction for an offense handled under 771.1.

Most often, a 771.1 “Deferred Sentence” is arrived at by plea bargain. This means that the Defense Attorney and the Prosecutor agree to this deal, and the Court must then approve it.

While the outcome is not as clean as either a 7411 deal in a Drug Possession case, or a HYTA in any case where the Defendant is charged with a crime with occurred after their 17th, but before their 21st birthday, because no public record is ever made of those matters, a 771.1 deal still beats having a conviction show up years later on a public record. In other words, the person has to deal with it for that first year, but thereafter they can honestly report that they were not convicted of the offense which was the subject of the 771.1 Delayed Sentence.

Under this arrangement, the terms used by non-lawyers to describe what happens are actually more accurate than anything else. A person works out a deal which has them pleading guilty to an offense, which will then, using layman’s terms, “come off” their record in a year.