Conducting a Felony Search for Background Checking Purposes

A felony is the most serious of all crime classifications. According to the federal law of the United States, a crime is considered to be a felony if the convict is sentenced to an incarceration term of more than one year. Examples of felonies include burglary, robbery, espionage, kidnapping, rape, murder, aggravated assault, fraud, and more. A felony search is an investigation into the public records to determine if an individual has been convicted of committing a felony.

According to US law, those who commit felonies are divided into three categories: first degree principals, or those who actually committed the crime; second degree principals, or those who encouraged or assisted in the crime; and accessories, who aided the main convict either before or after the crime but did not participate in it directly.

When to Perform A Felony Search

Background checks to determine the criminal history of an individual can be very important. Before hiring a baby sitter, driver, someone for domestic help, or an employee for your company, it is recommended that you run a quick search on his or her background. There are many online resources that offer such background checks. Some are governmental and some are commercial; it is recommended that government sources are used. A felony record can be requested from the website of the county sheriff's office. Almost all states maintain their own databases of criminal records, but some may not allow access through the Internet.

If you are not allowed online access to the criminal records database, you can mail the sheriff's office with your request for a felony search; you will receive the results within seven to ten business days. There are definite fees for obtaining these records. Online results are not certified documents. To get them certified, you can download a request form from the website and send it with the records to the county sheriff's office, along with a self-addressed envelope and a check or money order to pay the fee. The copies will be certified and mailed back to you within five working days.

Certain websites will help you narrow down your search to a specific county. To search for an individual's felony record, you must provide the state and county where the individual is living or committed the crime and his or her first and last names. If the details you enter match with the information present in the database, your search will return the location of the convict. You are also provided with other information, such as the date of conviction, a description of the crime, the offender's current status, a photograph, and more.

Expunging Felonies from the Record

In some felony cases, the records can be expunged; this means that if an employer were to perform a felony search on a potential employee who had committed a felony but had it expunged, no record of the crime would be found. Most felony charges cannot be expunged if the accused is found guilty of the crime. For example, if one has multiple juvenile adjudications or adult convictions, has been charged with conspiring to commit a crime which holds a punishment of life imprisonment, has a committed sex offense of the first, second, or third degree, or has been adjudicated for a traffic offense, the record cannot be expunged. Those convicted of felonies must also wait five years after the conviction before attempting to expunge the record.