Denton Non-Disclosure Attorney

The Goolsby Law Firm represents clients who are seeking a motion for nondisclosure in the state of Texas and the Denton area by authoring of the petition and order and submitting the motion to the right Texas County.

Section 411.081 of the Government Code of Texas states that an individual who has completed a deferred adjudication probation successfully for a felony or misdemeanor can be qualified for the motion for nondisclosure. The motion is actually a petition that asks the court of original jurisdiction, which is the one that gave the deferred adjudication, to sign the order of nondisclosure. If the motion is approved, the nondisclosure order will effectively ban government agencies from revealing that you have been charged or been given a deferred adjudication.

To elaborate further, a deferred adjudication is any sentence, community supervision or sanction that was ordered by the court under Article 42.12, for any infraction other than class C misdemeanor. In deferred adjudication, a defendant generally admits his or her guilt to a judge of court but the official guilty finding is delayed. Instead, the defendant is ordered by the court to follow a set of informal rules for a certain period of time, which usually runs between one to two years. Once the time period expires and assuming that the defendant followed the rules and no new arrests were made, the case will be dismissed.

Please note that deferred adjudication is not the same as pretrial diversion or deferred disposition, where there is an agreement without the judge delaying or asking for findings of guilt. It is a baffling and complex area of the law and your best course of action would be to contact an experience lawyer from The Goolsby Law Firm to establish the particulars of your case.

If granted by the court, the motion for nondisclosure is excluded from the Public Information Act mandatory disclosure. What it means is that if you are successful in seeking an order of nondisclosure, your criminal history will not be disclosed if a request pursuant to Freedom of Information Act is made. However, bear in mind that even with a motion for nondisclosure, law enforcement agencies could still access your criminal history.

If you are seeking a motion for nondisclosure on a misdemeanor, you may petition the court right after the discharge of your deferred adjudication and the dismissal of your case. However, certain offenses require that you wait for a couple of years after your deferred adjudication is dismissed, before you can file the order of nondisclosure.

For a felony, there is usually a five year waiting period beginning from the date your deferred adjudication was dismissed before you can file for an order of nondisclosure. Some felony offenses though cannot be hidden or cleared by an order of nondisclosure. You should also know that for federal law purposes, deferred adjudication is the same as conviction. This means that even if you have been granted a motion for nondisclosure, you can still be penalized if you face a new federal charge, as though you have never been granted a motion for nondisclosure. Contact the Denton area Lawyers at Goolsby & associates to find out more about you eligibility to clear your criminal background.