Tennessee Criminal Records

Tennessee sells its state criminal history to anyone for $29 and has no statewide search of its trial courts, so a Tennessee record is either the Bureau of Investigation's name check or a county clerk's index, one county at a time, with Nashville and Memphis online and much of the rest at the counter. This page gives the Tennessee rule and the Tennessee search for each record, with government sources only.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation sells a name-based check of the state repository through TORIS, the Tennessee Open Records Information Services. The Bureau's request form states the scope and the price: "This request is for a Tennessee name-based criminal history background check only. Submit completed form along with the required $29" fee. Anyone may request it on anyone, by name and date of birth, online with a credit card or by mail, and the result is the state's record of Tennessee arrests and dispositions reported to the Bureau. It is a name search, and the criminal records page explains why a name match is a guess; the fingerprint version is for the person's own review and for the employers and licensing bodies the statutes name.

Tennessee's trial courts are the circuit and criminal courts, which try felonies, and the general sessions courts, which hear misdemeanors and the preliminary stages of felonies, and their files are kept by the clerks in each of the 95 counties. The Administrative Office of the Courts' public case history covers only the appellate courts: it "allows you to look up cases in the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals and Court of Criminal Appeals." For the trial courts there is no state search. The Criminal Court Clerk of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County posts a public case search that "will retrieve the name and address of each defendant as submitted by arresting/booking agency to this office," Shelby County's clerks post Memphis, and Knox, Hamilton and several others run their own, while many rural clerks search at the counter. The county pages on this site link each clerk. A background check company's "Tennessee criminal record" is either a TORIS result or a copy of one of these indexes.

Tennessee expunges under T.C.A. 40-32-101, which the courts' self-help center describes: "Expungement is a court-ordered process where the legal record of some criminal cases can be erased in the eyes of the law. In Tennessee, only certain criminal records can be expunged. Some cases can be expunged without any fees." A charge that was dismissed, not prosecuted or ended in acquittal is expunged on petition without a fee; a conviction for one of the eligible misdemeanors or low-level felonies may be expunged five years after the sentence is completed, with a fee, and since 2021 up to two eligible convictions may be expunged together. The petition goes to the clerk of the court that heard the case, and the order reaches the Bureau, which removes the case from TORIS. A copy that left before the order is reached through the federal rule on complete and up to date public records.

The Tennessee Public Records Act, T.C.A. 10-7-503, gives Tennessee citizens the right to inspect and copy government records, arrest and booking records among them, with the exception for records of pending investigations that the courts have read narrowly. Who is in custody is in the Department of Correction's felony offender information, "an online database to access information pertaining to felony offenders currently or formerly in the custody or under the supervision of the Tennessee Department of Correction," with "the offender's photo, status (incarcerated/probation/parole/inactive)" and sentence, and in the county jails' rosters, Shelby County's inmate records for Memphis and the Davidson County Sheriff's for Nashville among them. The arrest records page covers the rest.

A Tennessee judgment is enforceable for ten years and its lien on real property runs on the same clock. The Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure's Rule 69.07 explains that a judgment lien is created by registering a certified copy with the county register of deeds and, "once a judgment lien is created by registration, it will last for the time remaining in a ten-year period from the date of final judgment entry in the court clerk's office and for any extension granted by the court pursuant to Rule 69.04." The court records page covers where the judgments are searched.

Tennessee is divided into three federal judicial districts under 28 U.S.C. 123. The Eastern District sits at Knoxville for Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Claiborne, Grainger, Jefferson, Knox, Loudon, Monroe, Morgan, Roane, Scott, Sevier and Union; at Greeneville for Carter, Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, Hancock, Hawkins, Johnson, Sullivan, Unicoi and Washington; at Chattanooga for Bledsoe, Bradley, Hamilton, McMinn, Marion, Meigs, Polk, Rhea and Sequatchie; and at Winchester for Bedford, Coffee, Franklin, Grundy, Lincoln, Moore, Van Buren and Warren. The Middle District sits at Nashville for Cannon, Cheatham, Davidson, Dickson, Houston, Humphreys, Montgomery, Robertson, Rutherford, Stewart, Sumner, Trousdale, Williamson and Wilson; at Cookeville for Clay, Cumberland, De Kalb, Fentress, Jackson, Macon, Overton, Pickett, Putnam, Smith and White; and at Columbia for Giles, Hickman, Lawrence, Lewis, Marshall, Maury and Wayne. The Western District sits at Jackson and Dyersburg for Benton, Carroll, Chester, Crockett, Decatur, Dyer, Gibson, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Lake, McNairy, Madison, Obion, Perry and Weakley, and at Memphis for Fayette, Lauderdale, Shelby and Tipton. A federal case from any Tennessee county is on one of those dockets and on PACER, whose prices and gaps are on the criminal records page.

Whether a person has a Tennessee record: TORIS answers it for $29, by name and date of birth, from the Bureau's file.

Whether a person was charged in a county: the county clerk's index answers it, online in Nashville, Memphis and the larger counties, at the counter elsewhere.

Whether a person is in custody now: the county jail roster answers it, and the Department of Correction for state prison, probation and parole.

Whether an old case can still be found: an expunged case is erased at the clerk and the Bureau, a judgment lien lasts ten years, and a copy that predates an expungement is reached through the federal rule.