Legal Question in Criminal Law in Pennsylvania

SB 232 ... definition of arrest and prosecution

Hello, my question pertains to the recent passing of senate bill 232 which allows for the expungement of summary offenses if certain conditions are met. This is:

''... the individual has been free of arrest or prosecution.... for the greater of the following time periods:

(A) In the case of a summary offense, five years.

What exactly entails an arrest and prosecution for these matters? Would additional non-arrestable summary offenses be a determining factor?


Asked on 6/28/08, 5:20 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
John Gibson John W. Gibson, Esquire

Re: SB 232 ... definition of arrest and prosecution

Probably not. Thank you for bringing this up. The state of the law at present, to my knowledge, is that Summary Offenses are matters of public record but that criminal background checks are not supposed to include summary offenses. It will be interesting to see how they can "expunge" a summary offense. Anyway, a non-arrestable summary offense such as a parking ticket appears to be intentionally left out of the Bill.

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Answered on 7/07/08, 4:06 pm


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