What an Arizona DUI Arrest and Blood Draw Show on a Background Check

Attorney Answer

The arrest itself is already a record. An Arizona DUI arrest with a blood draw will show on a fingerprint-based background check even if no charge has been filed yet — typically as an arrest with no disposition, which reads worse than a resolved case.

A.R.S. § 41-1750 is the statute that decides this. It makes the Department of Public Safety the central state repository and requires criminal justice agencies to submit complete and accurate criminal history record information — fingerprints, charges, identifying data and disposition information — and it specifies who may receive that information, including noncriminal-justice employers who submit fingerprints and fees. The system is built around arrest plus disposition. That is precisely why your situation, where you were released and told nothing, still generates an entry: the arrest went in, and nothing has gone in after it.

The practical consequence is that the blank space is your problem, not the arrest. An employer reading an arrest with no disposition cannot tell whether the case was dropped, is pending, or ended in a conviction. Getting the disposition reported once there is one is the single most valuable thing you can do for how this reads.

What you can do

1. Request a review of your own Arizona criminal history record from DPS. Do this before an employer does, so nothing surprises you. 2. Search the online case lookup for the justice or superior court in the county where you were arrested, by your name and date of birth, to see whether anything has been filed. 3. Call the prosecutor's office for that county and ask whether the case has been submitted for charging. Blood results often take weeks, and charges can be filed long after release. 4. Check any paperwork you were given for anything about your license. If you were handed or mailed a notice, it carries its own deadline to request a hearing, and that deadline runs separately from the criminal case. 5. Once there is an outcome of any kind, confirm that the disposition has actually been reported to the repository and appears on your record. Do not assume it happens automatically.