Mathias, J.
Indiana’s expungement statutes generally provide petitioners with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to expunge records relating to convictions and adverse juvenile delinquency adjudications, but they also provide liberal amendment rules to allow petitioners to supplement petitions at any time with additional expungement requests that were omitted from the initial petition due to the petitioner’s excusable neglect or due to circumstances beyond the petitioner’s control. Ind. Code § 35-38-9-9(k) (2025). 1 Here, Harold E. Chastain filed a petition to expunge records relating to arrests and convictions he had acquired under six case numbers. More than two years after the trial court granted his request, he sought to include with his initial petition an additional request to expunge the records of a seventh case number that was not eligible for expungement at the time he had filed his initial petition.
On this question of first impression, we agree with the trial court that Chastain’s request to belatedly include the seventh case number with the other six was not permitted under our expungement statutes. The records of Chastain’s seventh case number were not omitted from his initial petition due to his excusable neglect or to circumstances beyond Chastain’s control; they were omitted because, at the time he chose to file his initial petition, those records were not eligible for expungement. If Chastain wished to include the records of his seventh case number with an initial petition, he was required to wait the requisite am ount of time for those records to become eligible for expungement before he filed that petition. Accordingly, we affirm the trial court’s denial of Chastain’s motion to amend his expungement petition.
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Indiana’s expungement statutes exist to help those who have remained law-abiding obtain a “second chance.”
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As relevant here, Indiana’s expungement statutes balance the need to help those who have earned a second chance against recidivists in two key ways. First, they establish mandatory waiting periods before certain records become eligible for expungement…
Further, the once-in-a-lifetime requirement has some give. For example, petitioners actually have 365 days to file various petitions across multiple counties. I.C. § 35-38-9-9(i). And, most significantly, our General Assembly expressly permits petitioners to supplement an initial petition with omitted expungement requests where the petitioner’s initial petition was filed “in good faith”; the omission of the information now being sought to be included was “due to: (A) excusable neglect; or (B) circumstances beyond the petitioner’s control”; and allowing the belated request “is in the best interests of justice.” I.C. § 35-38-9-9(k).
When a petitioner chooses to file his initial petition is a circumstance within the petitioner’s control.
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We agree with the State that Chastain’s failure to include the records of case number FC-75 in his initial petition was not due to excusable neglect or to circumstances beyond his control, as required under subsection (k)(2). Chastain does not suggest that excusable neglect applies here, and he did not omit case number FC-75 from his initial petition due to a circumstance beyond his control, such as his inability to identify or locate relevant records due to some disaster. Chastain failed to include his request to expunge the records from case number FC-75 in his initial petition because, at the time he filed that petition, those records were not eligible for expungement because the requisite time had not passed. See I.C. § 35-38-9-4(c).
Chastain does not dispute that he could not have included his request to expunge the records from case number FC-75 in his initial petition at the time he filed it….
Our General Assembly has established certain timeframes that must lapse before records may be expunged; those timeframes ensure that petitioners have established that they have “been . . . law-abiding citizen[s]” when they file their petitions. Marshall, 52 N.E.3d at 45 (quoting Taylor, 7 N.E.3d at 367) (emphasis removed). Thus, Chastain had the opportunity to include the records from case number FC-75 in an initial petition—but he had to wait the requisite timeframe for those records to be eligible for expungement before he filed that initial petition. Stated another way, the timing of when Chastain chose to file his initial petition was not a “circumstance[] beyond [his] control.” To the contrary, only he controlled the timing of his initial petition.
Accepting Chastain’s argument on this issue would undermine the statutory constraints our General Assembly has determined to be necessary to ensure that the purposes of our expungement statutes are best fulfilled. In particular, if a petitioner can file an initial petition at any time and then seek to supplement that petition at any later time with ensuing case numbers as those ensuing case numbers become eligible for expungement, the once-in-a-lifetime requirement would be meaningless. Chastain’s argument also undermines ensuring that those who petition for expungement have spent a requisite amount of time living law-abiding lives; under his theory for relief, a petitioner can simply supplement an already-filed petition on a rolling basis forever and despite being a recidivist. We reject his argument accordingly.
Conclusion
For all of these reasons, we conclude that Chastain’s request to supplement his January 2021 petition to expunge the records from case number FC-75 was not permitted under Indiana Code section 35-38-9-9(k). We therefore affirm the trial court’s denial of Chastain’s request.
Affirmed.
Altice, C.J., and Foley, J., concur.