I checked with Montgomery County Police as they are the record holders of my conviction per the FBI and they confirmed that the only record they have is a paraphernalia charge from 1997. I then tried the state police and was advised that -
I may have just jumped the gun a bit (No pun intended lol). On 2/20/24 I received another letter of compliance from the Montgomery County Police and district court for Montgomery County. Oops...
I also have a consultation setup for later this week with the folks at Cohen/Harris.
Okay my 2.5 cents ( inflation ) is yes do what Cohen and harris say to do.Ya may want to get down to Rockville and have that expunged as well. Couldn't hurt. Ask your lawyer.
But I would bet the arrest for the drug related charge is showing on your FBI rap sheet as a no disposition case, aka they never closed it out. Or it could be listed wrong on the record. Maryland did not hit you on it as they can see the maryland court records directly and can see it was not disqualifying. The FBI rap sheet shows what is sent to them during and arrest with finger prints and other stuff. So if you git arrested and it was sent to the fbi and then dropped or found not guilty or what ever and the county ( not the state ) did not send the final end of stuff to the fbi it did not get updated. Like they could have arrested you for drugs ( disqualifying level ) and you plead to paraphernalia, the FBI only sees it as the drug charge.
You need to send to the FBI for your rap sheet, its cheap and easy and does not take long if you do it online, just a few weeks. Then Go to the county and file for an expungement of the charges, but request your record on the case from the county and send that to the FBI while the expungement works it was thru. That way your cover both bases, because if the county does the expungement, the record from the fbi will still be there as the records they are probably seeing are internal fbi records not the cjis system.