Expunctions and Requirement of Statute of Limitations Tolling of the Limitations

Now if the charge is filed and dismissed, you have to wait until the statute limitations runs. so, we’re talking about you know, no statute limitations on murder, aggravated sexual assault, indecency, 10 years on your more serious misdemeanors, 7 years on fiduciary crimes; very these are kind of cursery run down of what the statute limitations are. 3 years on most felonies and then all misdemeanors it’s going to be a statute limitations of 2 years. So, when you’ve got somebody arrested and the case is later on dismissed, you can get that expunged but you do have to wait for the statute limitations to expire. Now, you need to consider the tolling provisions the things that stop the statute of limitations from running. One thing is the time absent from the state. I’ve never really gotten any blowback on this. If you’re client is from outer state they’re probably not going to considered the statute tolled just because he lived out of state.

But the time during pendency of the indictment does not count towards the statute of limitations. So, in pendency the indictment starts when it’s filed, and it ends when it’s dismissed. So all the time that you’re going to court for these people up until you get it dismissed that time’s not counting towards the statute of limitations. So the way you calculate that; just to be super safe now some of your jurisdictions are not going to care about tolling. In Travis County you’re never going to get something past our gate keepers of expunctions without calculating also the tolling provisions. So the way you calculate that, is you take the time from the date of the offense up until the date it was filed. So, on the misdemeanors it does probably going to be about a month, few months for a felony. Plus the time from when it was dismissed up until the present. And then you take out your, the time absent from the state if that’s an issue or and if you want to be real to particulate about it take out the date of the offense and the date of the indictment; those technically don’t count anyway. So once, the time before they were charged and the time from the dismissal to the present, once that is greater than the statute of limitations, that’s when you can apply for an expunction.