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Summary Offenses, Alcohol, & Expungements

Brian Zeiger — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:58:54 +0000

As we have previously discussed, when you are arrested and you are NOT convicted of any crime and you do NOT plea guilty to any crime, you can have the record of your arrest expunged in Pennsylvania. However, if you are convicted or plea guilty to a summary offense, you can have the conviction of the summary expunged if you wait five years and stay out of trouble during that five you period of time.

An exception exists to the five year waiting period. The exception is directly written into the expungement statute at 18 Pa.C.S. sec. 9122(a)(3) as:

a person 21 years of age or older who has been convicted of a
violation of section 6308 (relating to purchase, consumption,
possession or transportation of liquor or malt or brewed beverages)
petitions the court of common pleas in the county where the conviction
occurred seeking expungement and the person has satisfied all terms and
conditions of the sentence imposed for the violation, including any
suspension of operating privileges imposed pursuant to section 6310.4
(relating to restriction of operating privileges). Upon review of the
petition, the court shall order the expungement of all criminal history
record information and all administrative records of the Department of
Transportation relating to said conviction.

This means that if you are convicted of a summary offense under 18 Pa.C.S. 6308, you are over 21 years old and you have satisfied all of the requirements from the initial sentence, your summary conviction shall be expunged without the five year waiting period. 18 Pa.C.S. 6308 involves summary offenses related to alcohol.

Therefore, your under aged drinking conviction can get expunged in less then five years.

In Japan its also illegal to purchase alcohol under age. However, you can buy beer from a vending a machine.

Is a Summary Offense a Crime?

Brian Zeiger — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:36:50 +0000

A distinguished lawyer call our office this morning to discuss a previous post on summary offenses, where the reader could interpret our post to mean that summary offenses are not crimes. He stated that under Commonwealth v. Matty, 619 A.2d 1383 (Pa. Super. 1993), certain summary offenses are in fact crimes because if you face jail time in a case, it is a criminal case.

First, summary offenses are broken into two categories, traffic offenses and non-traffic offenses. Certain traffic offenses are not criminal offenses, but can carry jail time. Therefore, I respectfully disagree with my colleage that if you are looking at jail time, the case that puts you in jail must be a crime.

Further, in Matty, the issue is whether a conviction for a summary conviction can stand when a crime was charged to the jury. The issue in the case is NOT whether a summary offense is a crime. Clearly, 18 Pa.C.S.A. sec. 106, defines all gradations of crimes and summaries are not listed. Therefore a summary offense is not a crime technically. Therefore, I respectfully disagree with my colleague regarding the syntax of the case and the PA Code.

However, summary offenses are reported to the Pennsylvani State Police and they pop-up on record checks (traffic offenses do not appear on criminal record checks). Regardless of how one reads the Matty case or sec. 106, if you are convicted of a Summary Offense, you may face jail time and the Summary Offense will come up in a crminal record check.

A Summary Offense is expungeable and a Summary Offense is reported on a criminal record check. This debate about whether a Summary Offense is a criminal offense is of no moment. The real issue is whether a Summary conviction can effect your life and liberty? The answer is clearly: yes.