What the law does
H 7079 Sub A and its Senate companion S 3036 Sub A were signed by Governor McKee on June 22, 2026 and took effect on passage. They amend three sections of Chapter 12-1.3 at once — the definitions, the motion section, and the criteria for granting.
The centrepiece is a new subsection permitting a person convicted of more than one but fewer than five felonies — so two, three or four — to move for expungement of any or all of them, provided none is a crime of violence or one of the newly defined "other prohibited offenses".
Before this, that person had nothing. First-offender expungement requires a single conviction and no prior probation; the multiple-conviction path was misdemeanours only. Two felonies meant no path at all, at any distance in time.
Fifteen years, and it is two clocks
The new path waits fifteen years from the completion of the last sentence — the most recent one, not the oldest. Separately, the criteria section requires that in the fifteen years before filing the petitioner has not been convicted nor arrested for any felony or misdemeanor, with no proceedings pending and good character shown.
Both have to be satisfied independently. Someone clean for fifteen years whose probation closed three years ago has not met the first. Someone whose last sentence closed in 2005 but who was arrested in 2020 has not met the second.
The part people will miss: one attempt only
The subsection closes with a sentence that is easy to skim and expensive to skim. A person is not eligible to expunge the remainder of their felony offenses after a successful expungement under it.
That makes the choice of which convictions to include in the motion irreversible. If you have four qualifying felonies and you move on one, the other three stay. This is the single strongest argument for not filing this one alone.
A second exclusion list now exists
The same act created a new defined term — "other prohibited offenses" — which is separate from the crimes-of-violence list that has always been in the chapter, and which closes both multiple-conviction paths.
It runs to fifteen entries: assault with a dangerous weapon in a dwelling house; assaults on people sixty or older, on people with severe impairments, and on children causing serious bodily injury; battery by an adult on a child ten or younger; cruelty to or neglect of a child; child abuse under Brendan's Law; child endangerment; a criminal offense against a victim who is a minor; every weapons offense in chapter 47 of title 11; the entire human trafficking chapter; failing to stop after an accident causing personal injury; driving so as to endanger resulting in death; and driving under the influence resulting in death.
The two chapter-wide entries are the widest in effect and the easiest to overlook. Being clear of the crimes-of-violence list no longer means being clear.
It also loosened the misdemeanor path, ambiguously
A quieter change in the same act: the multiple-misdemeanor path used to be closed by any felony conviction. It now reads as being closed by a felony "which is a crime of violence or other prohibited offenses".
On its face that is a real expansion — an ordinary non-violent felony would no longer shut the misdemeanor path. But the drafting is genuinely unclear and there is no case law on it yet. Anyone in that position should get advice rather than a guess in either direction.
Why your search results are still wrong about this
The published General Laws had not been updated to reflect any of this at the time of writing. Pulling § 12-1.3-2 from the legislature's own server still returns the pre-amendment text, with a history line ending at 2018.
That is normal — codification lags enactment — but it means summaries, guides and law firm pages that were accurate a year ago are describing a rule that is no longer the law, and will keep doing so until they are rewritten. If you were told before last summer that multiple felonies could never be expunged in Rhode Island, that answer was correct when you got it and is not correct now.
This post rests on the enacted bill text rather than the codified statute for that reason. When the compilation catches up, the subsection lettering here should be checked against it.
