Legal Question in Criminal Law in Minnesota

Re: Felony down to Misdemeanor

As a practical matter, nothing really disappears from your "record."

I get this question frequently. Many people presume there is some sort of master list of prior offenses, an "official" record, on which offenses are tallied. That is not really accurate. The "record" can be nothing more than a record of all cases in which you appeared as a defendant in a given jurisdiction, and may include any evidence of a prior charge,the disposition of the charge, and a subsequent reduction in offense severity. That entire history is part of the actual court record. After a conviction is reduced from a felony to a misdemeanor, for example, the prior history is not wiped away and suddenly inaccessible. Thus, if asked on an employment application for a list of your prior convictions (that is, for judgments of conviction), you can perhaps omit the felony, depending on how the question is worded and the nature of the job you are applying for, etc. But the record, and by that I mean the record of activity on a case file, remains.