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Published by the Indiana Office of Court Services

Wall v. State, No. 85A02-1311-MI-976, __ N.E.2d __ (Ind. Ct. App., June 25, 2014).

June 26, 2014 Filed Under: Criminal Tagged With: Appeals, T. Crone

Crone, J.
In February 1992, Wall was convicted of class C felony criminal mischief. The trial court ordered Wall to serve three years with all but 120 days suspended to probation. In February 1993, Wall admitted to violating his probation by not updating his address record with the probation department, and the trial court revoked the balance of his sentence.
In September 2013, Wall filed a petition to expunge his conviction pursuant to Indiana Code Section 35-38-9-4 . . . .
. . . .
Wall argues that he successfully completed his sentence and term of supervised release and that the trial court was therefore required to expunge the records of his conviction. We recently addressed similar arguments regarding a similar expungement statute for misdemeanor convictions, Indiana Code Section 35-38-9-2, in Alvey v. State, No. 20A04-1310-MI-533, 2014 WL 2202841, slip op. at 10-11 (Ind. Ct. App. May 28, 2014). In Alvey, the court noted that although the defendant had completed his sentence in community corrections he had twice admitted to violating probation. Therefore, he did not “successfully complete[] his sentence, including any term of supervised release” as required by Section 35-38-9-2. Id. at 2. The Alvey court opined that the intent of the General Assembly “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 … to expunge the records of their conviction.” Id. at 5-6 (quoting Pittman v. State, No. 06A05-1305-CR-243, 2014 WL 1711011, slip op. at 10 (Ind. Ct. App. Apr. 30, 2014)).
We think that the legislature had the same intent in drafting Section 35-38-9-4, which applies to felony convictions. In this case, Wall admitted to violating the terms of his probation, and by doing so he failed to successfully complete his sentence. Wall contends that his probation violation was a “technical” one. Appellant’s Br. at 17. However, Section 35-38-9-4 does not distinguish between major and minor violations.  [Footnote omitted.]
Based on the foregoing, we conclude that the trial court properly denied Wall’s petition to expunge his conviction.
BAKER, J., and BARNES, J., concur.

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