BALTIMORE — When Governor Moore pardoned 175,000 marijuana convictions last year, it was only the beginning in a series of reforms meant to give people a second chance.
The Expungement Reform Act of 2025, backed by the Governor, passed in the General Assembly in the latest legislative session.
It makes it easier for people convicted of certain crimes to get their record cleared years later.
“And I want to be very clear - this is not about letting criminals or repeat offenders off the hook. This is about common sense," Governor Moore said in a social media post advocating for the bill earlier this year. "Not every sentence needs to be a life sentence.”
Zachary Alberts is the director of advocacy at the Center for Urban Families (CFUF) in Baltimore. Part of the organization's work involves helping people who are trying to better their lives after a criminal conviction.
"And a lot of what they talk about is, 'Yeah, look, I did something I shouldn't have done 25 years ago. How am I supposed to get on with my life right now if the state has all of these barriers in place to me doing the thing that they're telling me they want me to do, that I'm trying to do," Alberts told WMAR-2 News.
CFUF has been pushing for this bill to get passed for the last three years. In 2022, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled that any probation violation would automatically make someone permanently ineligible for expungement.
"Right off the bat that knocked off about 42% of eligible Marylanders from expungement and so that that decision was a really, really big blow against opening up expungement access to Marylanders," Alberts said.
The new law essentially undoes that 2022 ruling.
"You still have to go through all the other hoops anyone has to receive that expungement, which are many," Alberts explained. "So it's not like, oh, automatically you just get expungement at the end of a sentence or anything. Everything's the same. It's just saying violating parole and probation isn't an automatic disqualifier."
The Maryland Chiefs of Police Association and the Maryland Sheriffs Association opposed the bill, expressing concerns that it would remove the incentive for people to comply with the terms of their probation or parole.
"Requiring that a sentence be “satisfactorily” completed in order to have a conviction expunged provides an incentive for individuals to comply with probation, parole, and conditions of the sentence. Removing completion of parole as a requirement further erodes consequences," they argued in written testimony.
Supporters of the bill say if you commit a new crime while on probation, you won't be eligible to have your record cleared until after serving time for that new crime. And if the crime is serious enough, it might not even be eligible for expungement at all.
But they believe technical probation violations - like missing an appointment - shouldn't keep you from being able to move on with your life.
"People often bring up the point that there's some sort of public safety concern when it comes into expungements," Alberts said. "The facts and the research show that people that recidivate - that is people that commit crimes again - 95% of people that recidivate do so in the first two to three years after being released from incarceration. You aren't even eligible for expungement until five years after you finish your sentence. And so the thought that all of a sudden all of these people are gonna recidivate again because they no longer have this record, that's just not what the facts show us. If they're gonna do it, they're gonna do it before they even get a chance to get a criminal record expungement."
The new reforms also expand the number of non-violent offenses that are eligible for eventual expungement, such as driving without a license.
And it removes marijauna possession convictions from the state's online records database, called Maryland Judiciary Case Search. Although the Governor already pardoned those convictions, they were still visible online.
"It allows folks access to the economic playing field, it allows folks access to education and makes sure they have safe and secure housing. When you have all of those things, you can live a productive life as a normal tax paying citizen," Alberts told WMAR-2 News.
Governor Moore signed the bill into law today. It's set to take effect in October, except for the piece about removing pardoned marijuana convictions from the online database, which is scheduled to effect on January 31, 2026.
For a list of convictions that are eligible for expungement, click here.
