Washington Expungement Lawyer: A Vancouver Guide to Vacating a Conviction (RCW 9.94A.640)

BFQ Law Washington represents clients from our Vancouver, WA office who are trying to close the book on an old conviction. If a decade-old misdemeanor is still knocking you off apartment applications, or a Class C felony from your twenties is blocking a professional license, Washington law provides a formal path to have the judgment withdrawn and the charge dismissed. For a confidential consultation, reach out through our contact page or email secretary@BFQLaw.com. BFQ Law will discuss engagement structure during your initial call.

What most people call “expungement” Washington actually calls vacation of judgment. The core statutes are RCW 9.94A.640 for felonies, RCW 9.96.060 for misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors, and RCW 13.50.260 for sealing juvenile records. Each has its own waiting period, its own list of disqualifying offenses, and its own downstream consequences for firearm rights, background checks, and immigration status. This guide walks through how those statutes operate in Clark County, what “completion of sentence” really means, how State v. Blake changed the landscape for old drug-possession cases, and where vacation stops helping.

This article provides general information about Washington law and is not legal advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship with BFQ Law. Every vacation petition turns on the specific offense, the sentencing court, the completion status of legal financial obligations, and the applicant's post-conviction record.

Table of Contents

• ➤ “Expungement” vs. “Vacating” in Washington
• ➤ Why Vacate a Conviction
• ➤ Vacating a Misdemeanor Under RCW 9.96.060
• ➤ Vacating a Felony Under RCW 9.94A.640
• ➤ What “Completion of Sentence” Really Means
• ➤ The Certificate of Discharge Under RCW 9.94A.637
• ➤ Juvenile Record Sealing Under RCW 13.50.260
• ➤ State v. Blake and Vacating Simple Drug Possession
• ➤ Firearm Rights Restoration and the Federal Overlay
• ➤ What Vacation Does Not Do
• ➤ Step-by-Step: Filing the Motion in Clark County
• ➤ Frequently Asked Questions
• ➤ Talk to a BFQ Law Washington Criminal Defense Lawyer

“Expungement” vs. “Vacating” in Washington

Washington does not have a general adult “expungement” statute in the way many other states do. What it has is a vacation of judgment procedure, codified for felonies at RCW 9.94A.640 and for misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors at RCW 9.96.060. When a court grants vacation, it withdraws the guilty finding, sets aside the judgment, and dismisses the information. From that point forward the person may, for most purposes, state that they have never been convicted of the offense — including on private-employer job applications.

“Expungement” in common speech usually implies the record is destroyed. Vacation does not do that. The court file remains, and the underlying arrest and case history remain in Washington State Patrol databases and federal databases. What changes is the legal status: the conviction is treated as never having occurred for most private purposes. Juvenile records are different — under RCW 13.50.260, the court can order the juvenile file sealed, which removes it from public inspection. Adults do not get sealing in most contexts; they get vacation.

Why Vacate a Conviction

Clients come to our Vancouver office asking about vacation for concrete reasons. A vacated conviction usually stops showing up on the commercial background reports landlords and employers pull. It removes the box on most private job applications asking whether you have ever been convicted of a crime. It can unlock professional licensing paths — nursing, real estate, insurance, certain teaching credentials, and some healthcare roles — that treat a conviction as a bar or a heavy presumption against licensure. It can restore standing for housing in projects that categorically exclude applicants with recent convictions, and it can matter for adoption, foster care licensing, and coaching or volunteer roles at schools.

Vacation matters for firearm rights too, but the picture is complicated: vacation does not, by itself, restore the right to possess firearms under Washington or federal law. That is a separate proceeding under RCW 9.41.040 and RCW 9.41.041. Vacation is likewise not a reliable fix for federal immigration consequences. Those limits are discussed below. The point here is that the reasons to vacate are real, but the relief is not universal.

Vacating a Misdemeanor Under RCW 9.96.060

RCW 9.96.060 is the workhorse statute for misdemeanor and gross-misdemeanor vacations. It applies to convictions from Washington district and municipal courts — for Clark County residents, Clark County District Court, Vancouver Municipal Court, and the surrounding city courts. The petition is filed in the same court that entered the conviction.

Eligibility Under RCW 9.96.060(2)

Under RCW 9.96.060(2), an applicant must show that they have completed all terms of the sentence including LFOs, that no charges are pending, that a specified waiting period has elapsed, and that the offense is not one the statute excludes. The waiting period is three years after completion for most misdemeanors, and five years for DV-designated misdemeanors. Most alcohol-related driving offenses cannot be vacated at all under RCW 9.96.060(2)(e).

The statute also bars vacation where the applicant has been convicted of a new crime since the conviction being vacated, or where restraining or no-contact orders are currently in force. Meeting the waiting period is necessary but not sufficient — the clean-intervening-record requirement is often the pinch point for applicants who had a rocky decade after the original case.

Vacating a Felony Under RCW 9.94A.640

RCW 9.94A.640 governs vacation of adult felony convictions. The petition is filed in the superior court of conviction — for Vancouver-area cases, that is Clark County Superior Court. The court has discretion; even a technically eligible applicant can be denied if vacation is not in the interest of justice. Eligibility is the gate to walk through first.

Waiting Periods: Class B vs. Class C

The felony waiting period under RCW 9.94A.640(2) turns on class. For a Class C felony, the applicant must wait five years after completion of the sentence, including community custody and all legal financial obligations. For a Class B felony, the wait is ten years after completion. Class A felonies are categorically excluded — they can never be vacated under this statute. During the waiting period, the applicant must have no new criminal charges pending and no new convictions. Any new conviction resets the analysis.

Categorically Non-Vacatable Felonies Under RCW 9.94A.640(4)

RCW 9.94A.640(4) lists categories of felonies that cannot be vacated regardless of how much time has passed: violent offenses as defined in RCW 9.94A.030, sex offenses under that same section, felonies where the sentencing court found sexual motivation, and any felony DUI or other alcohol-related driving felony. It also excludes felony DV offenses against a family or household member meeting the statute's DV criteria. If your conviction falls into any of these buckets, the answer under RCW 9.94A.640 is a hard no — time will not cure it.

For everything else — a decade-old Class C property crime, an old Class B theft, a non-violent controlled substance offense not covered by the Blake track below — the analysis begins with confirming the class, the completion date, and the intervening record, and then confirming no disqualifying category applies.

What “Completion of Sentence” Really Means

Both vacation statutes start the clock at “completion of sentence.” That phrase covers more than the last day you walked out of custody. Completion means finishing every component the sentencing court imposed: jail or prison time, community custody or probation, treatment or classes, community service, no-contact orders with defined durations, and full payment of legal financial obligations — the LFOs, which typically bundle restitution to victims, court costs, fines, and fees.

Unpaid LFOs are one of the most common reasons a vacation motion gets bounced, often because interest accrued over years while the applicant was working paycheck to paycheck. The Washington Supreme Court's decisions in State v. Blazina and State v. Ramirez, together with legislative amendments, changed how courts handle LFOs and interest for indigent defendants. Motions to modify or waive discretionary LFOs and accrued interest are frequently a necessary preliminary step. A vacation-eligible case can become vacation-ready by first cleaning up the LFO ledger.

The Certificate of Discharge Under RCW 9.94A.637

For felony cases, RCW 9.94A.637 requires the sentencing court to issue a certificate of discharge once the offender completes all requirements of the sentence, including payment of LFOs. The certificate is not vacation. It is a formal order recognizing that the sentence is done and restoring civil rights — voting, jury service — other than firearm rights.

The certificate matters in the vacation timeline because it unambiguously establishes when the sentence was completed, which starts the five- or ten-year waiting period running under RCW 9.94A.640(2). If the Department of Corrections has not requested the certificate on its own, the applicant should. Ordering a certified copy from the superior court clerk is a routine early step in preparing a felony vacation petition.

Juvenile Record Sealing Under RCW 13.50.260

Juvenile records use a different framework. RCW 13.50.260 authorizes the juvenile court to seal the record. Sealing is stronger than vacation in one way — a sealed juvenile record is not open to public inspection, and the person may treat the proceedings as if they never occurred — and weaker in another, in that certain serious offenses do not qualify.

The statute has an administrative sealing track that operates automatically in many cases once the juvenile reaches eighteen, the case is resolved, and no charges remain pending — the juvenile court is required to hold the sealing hearing without the juvenile filing anything. It also has a petition sealing track for cases that do not qualify administratively, where the hearing was missed, or where circumstances have changed. Class A juvenile felonies and most sex offenses are excluded. Adults with juvenile records that never got sealed at eighteen frequently retain eligibility years later and can file the petition themselves.

State v. Blake and Vacating Simple Drug Possession

In State v. Blake, 197 Wn.2d 170 (2021), the Washington Supreme Court held that the state's simple drug-possession statute, former RCW 69.50.4013, was unconstitutional because it did not require the state to prove knowing possession. The immediate legal effect was that every conviction under the pre-Blake version of the statute was void from the beginning — not merely vacatable on public-policy grounds, but treated as though it had never lawfully been entered.

The legislature and the courts built a statewide clean-up process for identifying and vacating those convictions, including a refund mechanism for LFOs previously paid on them. Many Clark County residents still have qualifying old possession convictions on their records. The Blake track is separate from the general RCW 9.94A.640 procedure — no five- or ten-year wait, no class analysis, and it applies even where the conviction would otherwise be disqualifying under the general rules. If you have an old Washington drug-possession case, ask whether it is a Blake case. It may be one document away from being wiped out.

Firearm Rights Restoration and the Federal Overlay

The most-asked question in our vacation intakes is whether vacating the conviction gets the client's guns back. The short answer is no, not automatically. Firearm rights in Washington are addressed by RCW 9.41.040 and the restoration procedure at RCW 9.41.041. A person convicted of a felony, or of certain DV misdemeanors, is prohibited from possessing firearms under state law until the right to possess is restored in a separate proceeding. Vacation and restoration are distinct petitions with distinct requirements.

The federal overlay matters even more. Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g), federal law prohibits firearm possession by anyone convicted of a felony punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year, and by anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. The federal prohibition does not apply if the conviction was set aside, expunged, or the person's civil rights restored — unless the restoration expressly provides that the person may not possess firearms. Washington's certificate of discharge under RCW 9.94A.637 typically restores civil rights other than firearm rights, which federal courts have read as failing that test in some scenarios, keeping the federal prohibition in place. Until a client obtains an order specifically restoring firearm rights under RCW 9.41.040, they should not touch a firearm — getting it wrong exposes the client to a federal felony under § 922(g).

What Vacation Does Not Do

Vacation is powerful but limited. Under the Washington State Patrol Criminal Records Privacy Act at RCW Chapter 10.97, criminal history records maintained by law enforcement do not disappear when a court vacates a conviction. Fingerprint-based background checks — used by federal agencies, some licensing boards, school districts, and healthcare employers — often surface the underlying arrest and disposition even after vacation. What changes is how the disposition is reported: the record shows the case was dismissed after vacation, and Washington law limits what the vacated conviction can be used for in most private contexts, but the record persists.

Federal immigration consequences are another limit. Under the Matter of Pickering line of federal decisions, a state-court order vacating a conviction does not automatically erase it for federal immigration purposes if the vacation was based purely on post-sentencing rehabilitation or immigration hardship — as opposed to a legal or constitutional defect in the original proceedings. Noncitizen clients should not treat a Washington vacation order as a solution to a removal or naturalization problem without separate immigration counsel. Vacation also does not restore firearm rights, does not seal the underlying court file the way juvenile sealing does, does not immediately remove the record from private background-check aggregators, and does not prevent the conviction from being counted toward a future sentence under Washington's Sentencing Reform Act.

Step-by-Step: Filing the Motion in Clark County

Once eligibility is confirmed, the mechanics follow a predictable path. First, pull the complete court record on the conviction to be vacated — the judgment and sentence, any modifying orders, the LFO history, and, for felonies, the certificate of discharge. Second, run a current statewide criminal history check through the Washington State Patrol WATCH system to confirm the intervening record is clean.

Third, prepare the motion using the pattern forms published by the Washington Courts at courts.wa.gov/forms. The Administrative Office of the Courts maintains standardized motion, declaration, order, and notice forms for both felony and misdemeanor vacation. Fourth, serve the prosecuting attorney — the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney for superior court cases, or the city attorney for municipal cases. The prosecutor has a statutory opportunity to respond, and in DV, sex, and certain other categories, victim notification requirements attach.

Fifth, note the matter for hearing on the court's criminal motion calendar. Most straightforward vacations are decided on the papers or after brief argument. Contested cases — disputed LFOs, an arguably unclean intervening record, or discretionary concerns — may require a fuller presentation with letters of support, evidence of rehabilitation, and argument on why vacation serves the interest of justice. Sixth, once the court grants the motion, obtain a certified copy and forward it to the Washington State Patrol Identification Section so the criminal history record is updated. That last step is the one applicants most often skip — and it is the reason background reports keep showing the old conviction months after the court signed the order.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between expungement and vacation in Washington?

Washington's adult statutes do not use the term “expungement.” The available remedy is vacation of judgment under RCW 9.94A.640 for felonies and RCW 9.96.060 for misdemeanors. Vacation withdraws the guilty finding and dismisses the case. It does not destroy the underlying court file or delete the record from law-enforcement databases. Juvenile records get closer to true expungement through sealing under RCW 13.50.260.

Can I vacate a DUI conviction?

Generally no. RCW 9.94A.640(4) excludes felony DUI and other alcohol-related felony driving offenses, and RCW 9.96.060 excludes most alcohol-related misdemeanor driving convictions. A narrow set of pre-conviction diversion or deferred-prosecution outcomes may be handled differently, but a completed DUI conviction — misdemeanor or felony — is not vacatable under the general statutes. Bring the judgment and sentence to counsel to confirm the exact charge and disposition.

How long do I have to wait after my sentence is done?

Under RCW 9.96.060(2), the standard misdemeanor waiting period is three years after full completion of the sentence, with five years for domestic-violence-designated misdemeanors. Under RCW 9.94A.640(2), the felony waiting period is five years after completion for a Class C felony and ten years for a Class B felony. Class A felonies are never eligible. The clock starts running at completion — not sentencing — which for felonies is generally the date of the certificate of discharge under RCW 9.94A.637.

Will vacation restore my gun rights?

No, not automatically. Firearm rights are addressed in a separate proceeding under RCW 9.41.040 and RCW 9.41.041. Even after a Washington court vacates a conviction and issues a certificate of discharge, federal law under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g) may continue to prohibit possession unless the state restoration is specifically qualifying. Do not assume vacation puts a firearm back in your hands lawfully. Have counsel run the state-and-federal analysis and, where appropriate, file the separate motion to restore firearm rights.

Does an employer still see my vacated conviction on a background check?

It depends on the check. Private commercial checks that rely on public court dockets generally stop reporting the conviction after the court file is updated, though aggregators can lag. Fingerprint-based checks through WSP or the FBI — used by many licensing boards, school districts, and healthcare employers — may still surface the arrest and vacated disposition. On most private employment applications you may answer that you have not been convicted of the vacated offense. For law-enforcement and certain regulated roles, the answer differs and honesty about vacation status is generally required.

What if I have unpaid LFOs?

Unpaid LFOs block vacation because the sentence is not deemed complete under either RCW 9.94A.640 or RCW 9.96.060. But the LFO problem is often solvable. State v. Blazina, State v. Ramirez, and subsequent legislation changed how discretionary LFOs and interest are handled for indigent defendants. A motion to modify or waive discretionary LFOs and accrued interest is often a necessary preliminary step. Once the ledger is settled — by payment, waiver, or modification — the waiting-period clock starts and vacation becomes possible.

Can I vacate a felony domestic-violence conviction?

RCW 9.94A.640(4) excludes felony DV convictions against a family or household member from vacation. That is a categorical bar — time does not cure it. A misdemeanor DV conviction may be vacatable under RCW 9.96.060 after the longer DV waiting period, subject to the statute's other requirements including no intervening DV convictions or protective-order violations. Federal firearm consequences under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) for misdemeanor DV require separate analysis even after vacation.

Does it help with immigration status?

Sometimes, but not reliably. Federal immigration authorities do not automatically treat a state-court vacation as erasing the conviction. Under the Matter of Pickering doctrine, a vacation granted for a legal or constitutional defect in the original proceedings is more likely to be recognized than one granted purely for rehabilitative or hardship reasons. Noncitizen clients should coordinate any vacation strategy with immigration counsel before filing.

Talk to a BFQ Law Washington Criminal Defense Lawyer

Washington's vacation and sealing statutes will not undo everything, but for the right client with the right record they change what shows up when a landlord screens, a licensing board pulls a report, or an employer asks about criminal history. The rules are technical, the disqualifying categories are unforgiving, and the paperwork has to reach not just the court but the Washington State Patrol before the record actually changes.

If you live in Clark County and want a straight read on whether your conviction is eligible — and what to expect from the process — BFQ Law Washington's Vancouver office handles criminal defense including post-conviction relief. Reach out through our contact page or email secretary@BFQLaw.com to schedule a confidential consultation. We will pull your record, apply RCW 9.94A.640, RCW 9.96.060, or RCW 13.50.260 to your facts, flag any firearm or immigration issues, and discuss engagement structure during that initial call.