Can You Seal an Assault Conviction in Arizona?

You got into a fight years ago, or a shove outside a bar turned into a police report, and the assault conviction still shows up first on every background check. You paid the fine, finished the classes and stayed out of trouble. The record has not caught up with who you are now.

We seal Arizona records every day, and AZ Record Removal is owned and powered by Future First Criminal Law. Here is how an assault conviction fits under A.R.S. § 13-911 and where the lines fall.

Does a misdemeanor assault conviction qualify for sealing in Arizona?

Yes. Simple assault under A.R.S. § 13-1203 is a misdemeanor, and A.R.S. § 13-911 lets you apply to seal a misdemeanor conviction once the waiting period runs. The law splits assault three ways. Causing physical injury on purpose or knowingly is a class 1 misdemeanor. Causing injury recklessly is a class 2 misdemeanor. Putting someone in fear of injury, or touching someone to injure, insult or provoke them, is a class 3 misdemeanor. Read the text of A.R.S. § 13-1203 and those three lines are the whole section.

None of the three is a dangerous offense, none sits on Arizona’s serious offense list, and none carries a deadly weapon or serious physical injury as an element. A plain assault conviction clears every exclusion in the sealing law. What remains is the wait, the money and the judge. Our record sealing page walks through the filing itself.

Does an aggravated assault conviction qualify for sealing in Arizona?

Some do and some do not, and the paragraph you were convicted under decides it. Aggravated assault under A.R.S. § 13-1204 is a felony that runs from class 2 to class 6. The sealing law never names aggravated assault. It shuts out dangerous offenses, serious offenses, and any offense with a deadly weapon or serious physical injury as an element. An aggravated assault built on serious physical injury, or on a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, fails all three tests. One built on anything else often passes.

Convictions that often pass include a fracture or temporary disfigurement, an assault on a victim who was restrained, an assault on a teacher, nurse or firefighter with no weapon involved, an assault inside someone else’s home, and an assault by two or more people that caused physical injury. Read the full list in A.R.S. § 13-1204 and find your paragraph. The judgment of conviction controls, not the police report and not the original charge.

Which aggravated assault convictions are shut out of sealing?

Three groups, and they overlap. The first is a dangerous offense under A.R.S. § 13-105, meaning the discharge, use or threatening exhibition of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument, or the intentional or knowing infliction of serious physical injury. The second is a conviction on Arizona’s serious offense list, which includes aggravated assault that resulted in serious physical injury or involved a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument. The third is any offense with the weapon or the serious injury written into the elements of the crime.

In practice, a conviction under paragraph 1 or paragraph 2 of A.R.S. § 13-1204 stays public for life. Plea agreements change this picture. A case charged as aggravated assault with a weapon sometimes ends in a plea to a class 6 aggravated assault or to misdemeanor assault. Sealing follows the plea, so read the plea agreement and the sentencing minute entry before you decide you are out.

How long do you wait before you seal an assault conviction?

Two to ten years, and the class on the judgment sets it. As of 2026, A.R.S. § 13-911 counts the wait from the day you complete every nonmonetary term of the sentence, which means probation, jail, counseling and community service.

Conviction	Class	Wait
Assault, intentional or knowing injury	Class 1 misdemeanor	3 years
Assault, reckless injury	Class 2 misdemeanor	2 years
Assault, fear or offensive touching	Class 3 misdemeanor	2 years
Aggravated assault, class 4, 5 or 6	Felony	5 years
Aggravated assault, class 2 or 3, if not excluded	Felony	10 years

Money works differently. Fines, fees and restitution do not stop the clock, but every dollar must be paid on the day you file. A person who already had a case sealed and then picked up a new felony waits the new felony’s period plus five more years. Our page on how long record sealing takes in Arizona covers what happens after the filing goes in.

Does a domestic violence label change whether you seal an assault?

Not for sealing. A.R.S. § 13-3601 is not a separate crime. It is a label the prosecutor attaches to an assault when you and the other person were married, lived together, had a child together, dated, or were related. The sealing law has no domestic violence exclusion, so a misdemeanor DV assault seals on the same two or three year clock as any other misdemeanor assault. The clock starts after you finish the offender treatment program the judge ordered, since that program is a nonmonetary term of the sentence.

The label matters for firearms. Federal law bars anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing a gun, and an Arizona seal does not change a federal rule. Our post on gun rights after an Arizona domestic violence conviction explains the route that exists.

Does the victim get a say when you ask to seal an assault case?

Yes. Every assault has a victim, and A.R.S. § 13-911 gives a victim the right to be present and heard on the sealing application. The prosecutor has the right to respond and ask for a hearing. The judge holds the application for sixty days after filing unless the prosecutor and every victim who asked for notice state they do not object.

An objection is not a veto. The judge grants the application on a finding that sealing serves your best interests and the public’s safety, weighing what happened in your case, how long ago it happened and what you have done since. A victim who writes in to say you have both moved on helps. A victim who objects gets heard, then weighed against years of clean record. A denial bars a new application for three years, so the first filing has to carry the whole story.

What does sealing an assault conviction remove from a background check?

The public court record. After the judge signs, the clerk, the arresting agency, the prosecutor and the Department of Public Safety stop releasing the arrest, the charge, the conviction and the sentence to the public. A screening company that pulls from the court or from public DPS records comes back without the case. The law then lets you state on job, housing and loan applications that you were never arrested for, charged with or convicted of that crime.

You still disclose on a fingerprint clearance card application, for a job with a police agency, a prosecutor’s office, a court or a probation department, and anywhere a state or federal law requires it. A sealed aggravated assault still gets disclosed for a job supervising, teaching or caring for a minor. Sealing does not touch a news story, a Google result or a mugshot site. Our post on when background checks still show a sealed record lists every carve-out.

Should you set aside the assault conviction before you seal it?

In most cases, yes, and we file the two together. A set aside under A.R.S. § 13-905 asks the judge to set aside the judgment of guilt and dismiss the charge. The record stays public, but it now reads as dismissed, and the clerk charges no filing fee for the application. For a misdemeanor, the order includes a certificate of second chance, which tells a licensing board or a landlord the judge has released you from the penalties of the conviction. A class 4, 5 or 6 felony qualifies for the certificate two years after you fulfill the sentence.

The set aside carries its own exclusion list, and it tracks the sealing list. A dangerous offense is out. So is a felony with a victim under fifteen. If your aggravated assault clears sealing, it almost always clears set aside too. Our set aside page covers the filing, and our guide to the certificate of second chance explains what the certificate does.

Does sealing an assault conviction give your gun rights back?

No. Sealing hides the record and leaves your rights where they were. A misdemeanor assault never took your Arizona firearm rights, so there is nothing to restore under state law, with the federal domestic violence rule as the one exception. An aggravated assault felony took your rights, and a seal leaves that loss in place.

Two routes exist. A.R.S. § 13-910 lets you apply to the judge for restoration, and the judge decides. A dangerous offense is barred for life. A serious offense waits ten years from absolute discharge. Every other felony has no waiting period beyond discharge. The second route is the set aside, since A.R.S. § 13-905 restores the right to possess a firearm when the conviction is set aside, unless the conviction was a serious offense. Our firearm rights restoration page explains both filings, and our post on the ten-year rule for serious offenses covers the longer wait.

What if your aggravated assault is an undesignated class 6 felony?

Then one order cuts your sealing wait by two years. Many class 6 aggravated assaults end with the judge leaving the felony undesignated under A.R.S. § 13-604. Until the judge designates it, Arizona treats the conviction as a misdemeanor for most purposes and as a felony for firearm rights, historical priors, DNA collection and a few others. When you finish probation and get discharged, the judge designates it a misdemeanor, and the order still enters with an unpaid balance unless the balance is victim restitution or you refused to pay.

If probation ended and nobody filed, we file now. Once the designation order enters, the three-year misdemeanor clock replaces the five-year felony clock. The 2026 law under A.R.S. § 13-604.01 that lets a judge turn an older class 4, 5 or 6 felony into a misdemeanor requires an offense with no victim, so it does not reach assault. Start with our page on how to designate a felony to a misdemeanor.

What if your assault case was dismissed or you were found not guilty?

Then there is no waiting period at all. A.R.S. § 13-911 lets you apply the day the case ends when the charge was dismissed, the jury found you not guilty, or the police arrested you and the prosecutor never filed. The same holds for a diversion program that ended in a dismissal, which is how many first-time assault cases close in Arizona city courts.

A dismissed charge still shows on a background check until a judge seals it, and people leave these cases sitting for years because nobody told them that. If your assault charge ended in a plea to a lesser offense such as disorderly conduct, the conviction on your record is that lesser offense and follows its own rules. Our page on sealing a dismissed criminal case in Arizona covers the no-wait filing.

Why should you choose AZ Record Removal?

Arizona record clearing is all we do. We file the sealing application, the set aside and the designation request together when your case qualifies for all three, and we track the court through the sixty-day hold and the agency notices that follow. Before you pay, we pull your record and tell you what it shows, which paragraph you were convicted under and whether sealing is open to you.

AZ Record Removal is owned and powered by Future First Criminal Law. Our founder, Zachary Divelbiss, cleared six convictions of his own before he cleared anyone else’s. The fee is a flat $1,700 per case with no court fees, no filing fees and no hearing surcharge. Every case after the first is $500 off, hiring within 24 hours of your consultation takes $200 off, and payment plans are available. Full numbers sit on our pricing page. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 602-900-6240, and we schedule consultations during business hours.

What should you do next?

Find out what your record says. Our free eligibility quiz takes a few minutes and tells you which filings fit your case. If you are not sure whether the conviction reads as simple assault, aggravated assault or something else, our Arizona record search page shows you how to find the case first. Then call 602-900-6240 and we will tell you what we would file, what it costs and how long the wait is. No judge is required to grant any of it. Putting the right application in front of the right judge is the work, and it is the work we do every day.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does a sealed assault conviction still count against you if you are charged again?

Yes. A.R.S. § 13-911 keeps a sealed conviction available to police, prosecutors and judges. It still counts as a historical prior felony, still raises the sentence on a new felony, and still comes in to impeach you at a later trial. Sealing changes what the public and most employers see. It does not change what a prosecutor sees in a new case.

Is a sealed assault conviction visible on a fingerprint clearance card check?

Yes. A fingerprint clearance card application is one of the listed exceptions, so the Department of Public Safety sees the sealed case and you disclose it. Whether the card issues depends on the offense and the time passed, and a set aside with a certificate of second chance often helps that review more than the seal does.

Is it possible to seal two assault convictions at the same time?

Yes, as long as each one clears its own waiting period and neither is excluded. A person with two misdemeanor assaults from separate incidents files one application per case, and each case runs on its own clock. The five-year add-on in the law applies only when a felony was committed after an earlier case was already sealed.

How long does it take to seal an assault conviction once you file?

Expect the sixty-day hold first, since the judge waits that long unless the prosecutor and every noticed victim waive objection. After the judge signs, the clerk, the arresting agency and the Department of Public Safety each process the order, which adds weeks. Sixty days to four months from filing to a clean public record is the common range, and a case with no objection moves faster.