Q: My husband was accused of animal neglect but the lawyer made a deal of entering a non guilty plea if he is on unsupervised probation for 90 days and does 40 hrs community service. Then the case will be dismissed totally. The problem is that he applied for a job before this happened and is very close to getting hired. Will this show up when they run a background check. If this is anything wrong in the background check he will not get the job.

A: What your husband’s situation sounds like to me is that he went in front of a District Justice and his attorney negotiated a deal where the case stays at the District Justice level and gets withdrawn or bargained down to a summary if your husband does what is asked. I have no idea whether he was charged with a misdemeanor, felony or summary from what you write. If charged with a misdemeanor or felony and processed when arrested, he has an arrest record for what he has been charged with. Therefore, it is on his criminal history. Once the case is dismissed, he can expunge his record. If he was only charged with a summary offense, there will still be a record of all the paperwork filed at the District Justice level. Anybody with access to the PA State Police record system will be able to find this information. My suggestion is to seek an expungement of all the records once his case is dismissed. You will need an attorney to do this for you.