No. Washington does not have expungement for convictions. The state's actual process is called vacating a conviction, and RCW 9.96.060 specifically excludes DUI and physical control. A DUI conviction stays on your record permanently. If your DUI was reduced to reckless or negligent driving, that conviction can usually be vacated 10 years after the date of your arrest.
The terminology matters here more than usual, because using the wrong word leads people to pay for services that cannot deliver anything in this state.
Expunge, Vacate, and Seal Are Three Different Things
Expungement means destroying the record. For adult convictions in Washington, no statute authorizes it. When someone files a motion to expunge, the court rules treat it as a motion to destroy records, and there is no legal basis to grant one.
Vacating is what Washington actually offers. The court withdraws the guilty plea or sets aside the verdict and dismisses the case. You are released from the penalties and disabilities of the conviction, and you may lawfully state that you have never been convicted of that offense. The Washington State Patrol removes it from the criminal history it reports.
Sealing hides the court file from public view, and it is separate from vacating. It requires the court to find compelling privacy or safety concerns that outweigh public access. Even when a case is sealed, it still appears on the public index with a notation, and a prosecutor can reopen access if the conviction becomes relevant to a new charge.
So the accurate way to describe Washington law is that it offers a way to clear a conviction from your criminal history, not a way to erase the fact that anything happened.
Why DUI Is Excluded
RCW 9.96.060(2)(d) bars vacating a conviction for driving under the influence or physical control. There is no waiting period that cures it and no amount of good behavior that qualifies you later. A DUI conviction in Washington is permanent.
The same subsection also covers offenses that count as a prior offense under the DUI sentencing statute, which is where the rule for reduced charges comes from.
The Reduced-Charge Path
If your DUI was amended to reckless driving or negligent driving in the first degree, that conviction can be vacated, but on a longer clock than an ordinary misdemeanor.
The general waiting period for a misdemeanor is three years. For a conviction that started life as a DUI charge, it is 10 years from the date of arrest, and you are disqualified if there was a subsequent alcohol or drug violation within 10 years of that arrest.
Two details that competing pages routinely get wrong. The clock runs from the arrest date, not the conviction date, so a case that took a year to resolve reaches eligibility a year sooner than people expect. And the exclusion sits at subsection (2)(d) in current law. Pages citing subsection (2)(e) are quoting a version of the statute that has since been renumbered.
Additional requirements apply to every petition. You must have completed all terms of the sentence, including fines, fees, and restitution. You cannot have criminal charges pending in any court. Certain protection order restrictions disqualify you. And even when you qualify, the judge has discretion to say no.
Your Driving Record Does Not Change
This is the most important limitation on this page, and almost nobody mentions it.
Vacating clears the conviction from the criminal history reported by the Washington State Patrol. It does not touch your Department of Licensing driving record, which is a separate system governed by separate law.
RCW 46.01.260 prohibits the Department from ever destroying records of DUI and physical control convictions, records of deferred prosecutions, and records of the reduced charges that count as prior offenses. There is no exception for a conviction that has been vacated. The Department's retention schedule lists alcohol-related entries as staying for life.
The practical consequence is that an employer running a criminal background check may see nothing, while an employer running a driving record check still sees the entry. If you drive for a living, vacating solves less of your problem than it appears to.
Vacated Is Not Erased for the Next Prosecutor
The vacate statute says out loud that nothing in it prevents the use of a prior conviction in a later criminal prosecution.
For DUI specifically, the sentencing statute defines a prior offense by what the charge was originally filed as. A reckless driving conviction that began as a DUI counts as a prior offense within the lookback period whether or not it has been vacated. Washington extended the felony DUI lookback to 15 years effective January 2026, which makes this more consequential than it used to be.
Clean for landlords and employers. Not clean for sentencing on a later charge.
Deferred Prosecution: Dismissed, and Still a Prior Offense
Deferred prosecution ends with the charge dismissed after five years, which sounds like the cleanest possible outcome. Two things survive it.
The granted deferred prosecution stays on your driving record permanently, and it counts as a prior offense for sentencing if you are ever charged with a DUI again. The dismissal undoes neither. It is still often the right choice, but it should be chosen with those two facts on the table.
Background Checks, Travel, and Immigration
Background checks. After a vacate, the State Patrol stops reporting the conviction. Private background check companies that bought the record earlier may still show it, and the fix is a dispute under federal fair credit reporting law rather than anything the court can do. Federal law also limits the reporting of older non-conviction records, though convictions themselves can be reported indefinitely. See how a DUI affects a job search.
Canada. Canada has treated impaired driving as serious criminality since December 2018, and border officers work from historical records rather than the current status of a state conviction. A vacate does not guarantee entry. The reliable paths are a temporary resident permit or an application for criminal rehabilitation. See traveling to Canada after a DUI.
Immigration. If you are not a United States citizen, do not rely on a vacate. Immigration law only recognizes a vacated conviction when it was set aside because of a legal defect in the original case. A vacate granted for rehabilitation, which is what the Washington statute provides, still counts as a conviction in immigration proceedings. Talk to immigration counsel before assuming otherwise.
What Can Be Done About an Actual DUI Conviction
Since vacating is unavailable, the honest list is short.
A governor's pardon exists through the Clemency and Pardons Board, but it is reserved for extraordinary cases and is vanishingly rare for a standard misdemeanor. A Certificate of Restoration of Opportunity under chapter 9.97 RCW is available and does not exclude DUI, but it only limits how an occupational licensing agency may treat the conviction. It does not vacate, seal, or hide anything.
That leaves the real answer, which is that the fight over your permanent record happens while the case is open, not after it closes. Getting a DUI reduced to reckless or negligent driving is the difference between a conviction you can clear in 10 years and one you never can. It also changes what the case costs you.
Note: a bill to create a vacate pathway for DUI convictions has been introduced in the Washington Legislature but has not passed. As of August 2026, DUI convictions remain permanently non-vacatable.
Contact The Law Offices of Barbara Bowden for a free case review, available 24 hours a day.