For decades, a Pennsylvania governor's pardon left one job unfinished. The pardon itself is an act of clemency from the Governor, recommended by the Board of Pardons — but the conviction still sat in the county court's docket and in the Pennsylvania State Police criminal-history record until somebody filed a separate expungement petition in the county that convicted you. Applicants who had waited years for clemency then hired a lawyer a second time, paid another filing fee, and waited months more for the record to actually disappear.

Act 36 of 2023 ended that. Effective June 11, 2024, 18 Pa.C.S. § 9122(a.1) makes expungement of a pardoned conviction automatic. No petition. No filing fee. No second courthouse appearance.

What § 9122(a.1) actually requires

The mechanism is administrative, not adversarial. Once a pardon is granted, the record of the pardoned case is transmitted to the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts (AOPC), which routes it to the court of common pleas in the county of conviction. That court then orders the expungement of the pardoned offense without any filing by the applicant, and the expungement order flows to the Pennsylvania State Police so the central repository record is cleared too.

Two details matter in practice:

  • The transmission runs on a quarterly cycle. A pardon signed shortly after a quarterly transmission does not get picked up until the next one. That is normal, not a problem with your case — but it means the gap between "pardon granted" and "record gone" is typically measured in months, not days.
  • It reaches the pardoned offense, not everything on the docket. If a case involved multiple counts and the pardon covers some of them, only the pardoned counts are expunged. Anything outside the pardon's scope stays.

What this does not change

The hard part of a pardon is still the pardon. You still file an application with the Board of Pardons, still go through merit-review screening, still attend a public hearing in Harrisburg, still need the Board to recommend clemency, and still need the Governor to sign. Act 36 removed a post-grant chore; it did not lower the bar for clemency.

It also does not change firearm law. Expungement of a pardoned conviction does not by itself resolve eligibility questions under 18 Pa.C.S. § 6105 or federal law — that is a separate analysis, and it is worth getting a straight answer before you buy a firearm or apply for a permit.

If you were pardoned before June 11, 2024

Older pardons are the most common question we get about this change. If your pardon predates the effective date and no one ever filed the expungement petition, do not assume the record silently cleared itself — pull your Pennsylvania State Police criminal-history record and the county docket and confirm. Where the automatic mechanism does not reach an older grant, the traditional petition route under § 9122 is still available and is a straightforward filing once the pardon is in hand.

Living out of state

This change matters most for people who no longer live in Pennsylvania. Under the old regime, a pardoned applicant in Texas or Florida had to arrange a Pennsylvania court filing from a thousand miles away. Now the county court handles it on its own. Residency has never affected pardon eligibility in the first place — see our guide to applying for a PA pardon while living out of state, including whether you have to travel back for the hearing.

Where to start

If you are weighing whether clemency is even the right tool, compare it against the faster mechanisms first: many records are reachable through ordinary expungement, limited-access sealing, or Clean Slate without ever going to the Board. Pardons are for the convictions those routes cannot touch. Our pardon vs. expungement breakdown walks through which relief actually applies, and the expungement and pardon hub covers every Pennsylvania record-clearing route in one place. County-specific guidance is available for all 67 counties, including Philadelphia, Allegheny, Montgomery, Dauphin, and Cumberland counties.

This article is general information about Pennsylvania law and is not legal advice. Whether a pardon or expungement is available in your case depends on facts specific to your record.