Legal Question in Criminal Law in Arizona

Re: Restoring Rights

The first issue is to find out if it was a felony or a misdemeanor. Check out this link to find out http://www.dps.state.az.us/reports/criminalhistory/default.asp. You will have to get your fingerprints and submit the necessary forms. If it was a misdemeanor, than you are good. If it was a felony, then you will need to keep going.

The federal Safe Explosives Act prevents those who have been convicted of a felony, where the Judge could have sentenced you to more than one year confinement, from obtaining an explosive license. So if the conviction is a felony, you would have to look at what the charge was and see at the time whether you could have received in excess of one year confinement. If not, then you should be good. If so, then the real issue isn't restoration of civil rights, because your conviction will still be there. What you would have to do is to apply to the court to try and get the conviction set aside. You would argue that it was so long ago, you have done great things since, etc. If the qualifying felony conviction is not set aside, then I don't think you will get your license. If it is, hopefully ATF will pass you. If not, I believe you can appeal that, and argue again that it was so far in the past, it wasn't a dangerous offense, etc.

So first apply to get your record. If it is a qualifying felony conviction, contact me and I can see if we can get it set aside and restore all civil rights also.

Christopher Winchell

Attorney at Law