Gravito v. Commonwealth: Every Defendant Keeps Full Access to Their Own Sealed Records

On November 25, 2025, the Supreme Judicial Court decided Gravito v. Commonwealth, and the rule it announced belongs to every Massachusetts defendant with a sealed record. Sealing closes your file to employers, landlords, and the public. It never closes your file to you. The SJC held unanimously that a defendant and his attorney keep full access to his own sealed records and may use them in his defense, without filing any special motion, because the Legislature designed sealing to protect people from public exposure and never intended it to hinder a fair defense or appeal.

The Rule Is for Everyone

Massachusetts seals records in several ways. Acquittals now seal automatically unless a defendant objects. Dismissals and nolle prosequi (prosecutor’s dropped charges) charges seal by your petition to a judge under 100C. Convictions seal after a waiting period on your petition under 100A. The protection runs in one direction. The record disappears from the view of the people (employers, schools, landlords) sealing was designed to guard against, and personal access for you and your attorney stays exactly where it has always been, at the top of the CORI access hierarchy. Gravito confirms that this personal access includes the right to review, copy, and actually use your own sealed files whenever your defense requires them, whether you are appealing, litigating a motion for new trial, correcting a record, or simply understanding your own history before a sealing or expungement petition.

What Happened in Gravito

The case reached the SJC on specific facts, and the breadth of the ruling is what matters more than the facts themselves. A jury convicted Mark Gravito of one count of indecent assault and battery on a child and acquitted him on five other counts. The automatic sealing statute sealed the acquitted charges, and when he appealed the conviction, a trial judge restricted his appellate lawyer to reviewing the sealed portions under supervision at the courthouse, with no copies allowed. The SJC unanimously threw those restrictions out. Nothing in the sealing statutes suggests the Legislature meant to limit a defendant’s access to his own case, and the right to effective appellate counsel means little if the lawyer cannot hold and work from the record being challenged.

Why It Matters Beyond Appeals

The decision removes a hesitation that has quietly followed sealing for years. Clients regularly worry that sealing an old case means losing their own paperwork, and some have delayed sealing for exactly that reason. That fear now has a definitive answer from the state’s highest court. Your sealed record stays fully open to you and your attorney, with no motion practice required, while remaining closed to the background check companies, employers, and landlords the seal was built to stop. Anyone who has been putting off a sealing petition can proceed knowing the seal takes nothing away from them.

The Sealing Framework Gravito Strengthens

Massachusetts sealing runs on two statutes. Section 100A of chapter 276 seals convictions by petition to the Commissioner of Probation after a waiting period, which the 2018 criminal justice reform shortened to three years for misdemeanors and seven for felonies. Section 100C reaches cases that ended without a conviction, and the SJC in Commonwealth v. Pon, 469 Mass. 296 (2014), gave dismissed charges a practical good cause standard that made discretionary sealing far more attainable. Expungement under Section 100E is the separate and narrower remedy that destroys the record entirely. The payoff is written into the employment statutes. Under M.G.L. c. 151B, an employer may not ask about sealed cases, and an applicant with a sealed record may lawfully answer that he has no record. The full standards, the case law, and the offenses that can never be sealed are collected on our page covering Massachusetts sealing and expungement standards.

Students and Professionals Use This Right Constantly

The people who need their own sealed files most are the people building applications. A student answering a graduate school or bar application question needs to know exactly what the record says before answering anything, and a licensed professional responding to a board inquiry needs the certified docket, not a memory of it. Gravito guarantees both of them the file. The smart sequence is to pull the record, read it with counsel, and answer questions accurately and narrowly, which our student FAQs and licensed professionals FAQs both walk through.

What to Do With This

If any court or clerk’s office resists giving you or your lawyer your own sealed file, Gravito is now controlling law and the restriction should not survive a citation to it. If you have an old case you have been meaning to seal, the rules, waiting periods, and eligibility are covered on our page about sealing and expunging a Massachusetts criminal record, with the most common questions answered in our sealing and expungement FAQs. Serpa Law Office handles record sealing and the criminal cases that come before it across Massachusetts. Contact Serpa Law Office at 617.936.0201 for a confidential consultation.