The New Jersey Expungement Statute provides that a petition for expungement should be denied if the applicant “has prior to or subsequent to said conviction been granted the dismissal of criminal charges following completion of a supervisory treatment or other diversion program.”

The Appellate Division has concluded that thus disqualifier only applies to instances when the conditional discharge was for a criminal offense and not a disorderly persons offense.  In that case, the court  looked to the language of the statute and noted that the statute consistently distinguished disorderly persons, petty disorderly persons, and criminal offenses when discussing expungement options, but, only identified criminal offenses when discussing the diversion program disqualifier.    The Court further noted that precedent showed that a “disorderly persons is deemed to be a petty offense, rather than a crime within the provision of our State Constitution.”   Therefore, the Court concluded that only a diversion program for a criminal offense, not a disorderly person offense could act as a bar to an expungement request.