If You Are Denied an Expungement or Pardon, can you Re-Apply? A Minnesota Expungement & Pardon Attorney Uses the Recent Jason Sole Pardon to Explain

If you are looking to clear your record in Minnesota, there are two primary paths to do that. You can seek an expungement or you can seek a pardon. Both processes involve filing paperwork, making arguments, and preparing to put forth the best case possible to clear your record. There are many things you can do to improve your chances of success. For example, studies suggest that hiring an attorney can make it more than five times more likely to clear your record. But no matter how good of an argument you have, it will never be a 100% chance of success. It will still be up to a judge or to the Pardon Board to make a decision. You can plan for success, but hoping for the best and preparing for the worst can be a good strategy to take when seeking to clear your record. Minnesota’s recent pardon of Jason Sole is a great example of how being denied is not the end of the story.

The Jason Sole Pardon and the Five Year Waiting Period

On December 17, 2025, Jason Sole received a pardon from the Minnesota Board of Pardons. When Jason Sole was a young man, he got mixed up with the wrong crowd and received felony convictions for drugs and gun possession. But he turned his life around, he became very active in voting rights advocacy, and went on to receive a Ph.D. More than 20 years later, he finally was able to clear his record in December of 2025. But anyone who says it was easy would be lying. Five years ago, Jason Sole applied for a pardon and was denied. After being denied by the pardon board, you need to wait five years before applying again. It would have been easy to lose hope after being denied. But Jason Sole worked even harder to gather support and make his case for a pardon five years later. And the pardon board granted him the pardon notwithstanding that he had been denied five years earlier.

The Expungement Re-Application Process

If pardons have a five-year waiting period, you may be asking what the waiting period for expungement denials? The answer may surprise you. There is no waiting period. You can apply right away after being denied. Because of all the rules around waiting to re-apply with both pardons and gun rights restoration petitions, many people get confused and think you need to wait. It’s not true. But despite there not being a waiting period, it doesn’t mean that you should take the initial expungement application glibly. There is still the months it takes to get an expungement hearing initially, and then if you are denied, you have to start the whole process over again. And then it becomes more of a process swimming up stream if you have a judge who already denied you, it can be more difficult to convince the next judge assigned to your expungement case to grant expungement (if it is a different judge, it is possible to be assigned the some judge). It is usually best if you lose an expungement petition, to circle the wagons and figure out a strategy that addresses the reason the judge denied the expungement petition before filing another petition. An experienced expungement attorney can help immensely as they know the process and know the road map that needs to be created to win.

Conclusion

Nobody wants to be denied an expungement or pardon. But it is never the end of the road if you are. Contact an experienced expungement and pardon attorney before you take your next step to figure out your best options. Contact Peter Lindstrom to speak with an attorney who has had success clearing felony, DWI, and domestic violence records. 651-248-5142.