Withhold of Adjudication and Record Sealing
A plea can end with a withhold or an adjudication of guilt. That difference can determine whether the ordinary Florida sealing and expunction statutes remain available.
A withhold changes the route, not the need for an eligibility screen.
For ordinary sealing eligibility, a withhold can preserve a path that an adjudication of guilt would usually foreclose.
Section 943.0584 defines “conviction” for its excluded-offense list to include a guilty or nolo plea even when adjudication is withheld.
The person must no longer be under court supervision connected to the disposition before court-ordered sealing is available.
A qualifying record sealed for at least 10 years may later become eligible for court-ordered expunction under section 943.0585.
The final judgment and the plea answer different eligibility questions.
The word “withhold” can preserve a route, but it does not erase the plea or override statutory exclusions.
- 01Withhold of adjudication: no adjudication of guilt is entered, so the ordinary sealing route can remain available if the person satisfies the other requirements and the offense is not excluded.
- 02Adjudication of guilt: ordinary court-ordered sealing and expunction under sections 943.059 and 943.0585 are generally unavailable.
- 03Excluded guilty or nolo plea: section 943.0584 treats the plea as a “conviction” for its exclusion list even when the judge withholds adjudication.
A withhold does not override section 943.0584.
Florida’s excluded-offense statute treats a guilty or nolo contendere plea as a “conviction” for the exclusion analysis even when adjudication was withheld. The list includes, among other offenses, assault or battery by one family or household member against another, aggravated assault, felony battery, domestic battery by strangulation, aggravated battery, stalking, burglary of a dwelling, robbery, carjacking, specified sexual offenses, child-abuse offenses, certain fraud offenses, drug trafficking, and other listed crimes.
That creates a recurring domestic-violence trap: a person may correctly understand that adjudication was withheld and still be statutorily barred from sealing the record because the plea itself falls within section 943.0584.
The list is offense-specific and should be checked against the actual statute of conviction, the relationship element where relevant, and the final disposition.
What must be checked before seeking a Certificate of Eligibility
FDLE screens both the target case and the person’s broader criminal history.
- 01Exact statute and whether the plea falls within section 943.0584
- 02Whether adjudication was actually withheld on every relevant count
- 03Whether the person has any disqualifying prior adjudication or relevant juvenile history
- 04Whether a prior court-ordered sealing or expunction has already been secured
- 05Whether all supervision connected to the case has terminated
- 06Whether the case should be sealed now and later screened for expunction after the statutory 10-year period
Read the disposition and the statute together.
A consultation can determine whether the withhold remains sealable, whether an offense exclusion applies, and what documents are needed for the FDLE eligibility process.