Mississippi Court Records: How to Search, What's Public, and How to Seal Them

Mississippi finished a long-delayed statewide rollout of its electronic court system in July 2025, and every circuit, chancery, and county court across all 82 counties is now part of it. That's a genuinely recent, significant change: the system was originally supposed to be statewide by 2021, and it took roughly four extra years to actually finish. Justice courts, which handle a large share of everyday misdemeanor and small-claims matters, are notably still outside it.

This page covers how to access Mississippi's court system, what stays outside it, what's public versus confidential under Mississippi law, and how the state's expunction process works.

Information last verified on 2026-08-10. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

How to Search Mississippi Court Records: MEC

Mississippi Electronic Courts, known as MEC, is the state's centralized case-management and public-access system, and as of July 2025, it finally covers every circuit, chancery, and county court in all 82 counties. That completion came late: the Legislature originally set a July 1, 2021 statewide deadline for the rollout, but the actual finish came roughly four years after that target.

MEC's own login page lists every county's circuit and chancery courts, plus the Mississippi Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, and MYCIDS for youth-court matters, corroborating that the system really does now reach statewide for those court levels. But MEC is login-gated: the system requires registering for an account before you can view documents, it is not an open, no-account search the way some other states' free tools are.

Fee structure is genuinely unsettled information at the time of this writing. One account describes public access running on a subscription with a 20-cents-per-page viewing fee; a separate, older reference points to a $10-a-year registration product called Public Access Mississippi Electronic Case Management, which may or may not be the same offering. Mississippi's own judiciary site (courts.ms.gov) was intermittently unreachable during this research, so treat any specific fee figure as something to confirm directly on MEC's registration pages at the time you actually sign up, not as a fixed number to rely on here.

Justice courts are a separate story. They are not mentioned as part of the July 2025 MEC completion, meaning justice-court records, which cover a substantial volume of everyday misdemeanor and small-claims matters, remain outside the statewide electronic system and are effectively local and paper-based.

The Courthouse Fallback

For anyone who would rather not register for MEC, or whose case is in a justice court that isn't part of MEC at all, Mississippi's courts point to a straightforward, no-cost alternative: going to the proper courthouse and looking at the legal filings on the public court terminal in person. This is a genuinely useful fallback in Mississippi specifically, given MEC's login requirement and its fee structure.

What's Public and What's Restricted in Mississippi

Mississippi's courts operate under their own presumption of openness, independent of the general state Public Records Act. Mississippi Rules of Civil Procedure Rule 77(b) mandates that "all trials upon the merits shall be conducted in open court, except as otherwise provided by statute." The Mississippi Constitution, Article 3, Section 26, permits a narrower closure in certain morals and sexual-offense prosecutions, allowing a court to "exclude from the courtroom all persons except such as are necessary" during that testimony.

Categories courts may restrict include juvenile proceedings, which are generally sealed unless a youth court orders disclosure, mental health records, trade secrets and confidential business information in discovery materials, grand jury proceedings, which are kept under seal by statute, and attorney discipline records, which stay confidential even though the underlying ethics hearings themselves are public.

One structural point is worth flagging because it is commonly stated backwards: Mississippi's courts are covered by the Public Records Act. The Act's definition of "public body" in Miss. Code Section 25-61-3 reaches "any other entity created by the Constitution or by law," which takes in the judiciary. Two narrow statutory carve-outs sit on top of that coverage rather than replacing it. Section 9-1-38 exempts records "developed among judges and among judges and their aides," and Section 13-5-97 exempts records "developed among juries concerning judicial decisions." Both subtract internal deliberative material, such as draft opinions and judges' internal memoranda. Neither one removes case files, dockets, or filings from public access. As a practical matter you will usually get a case file faster through MEC or the circuit clerk than through a formal public-records request, because the clerk is the custodian and court rules already presume the file is open, but a records request to a Mississippi court is not foreclosed. For the broader, nationwide framework behind this presumption of access, see are court records public?

Expunction in Mississippi

Mississippi uses the term expunction, governed by Miss. Code Section 99-19-71. For a non-traffic misdemeanor first offense, subsection (1) lets a person petition the justice, county, circuit, or municipal court in which the conviction was had for an order expunging that conviction from all public records. The statute attaches no sentence-completion precondition to the misdemeanor petition; the court retains discretion and may grant it if it finds the applicant rehabilitated from the offense.

The felony track is narrower and carries conditions the misdemeanor track does not. Under Section 99-19-71(2)(a), a person convicted of a felony who has paid all criminal fines and costs of court imposed in the sentence may petition to expunge one conviction three years after successful completion of all terms and conditions of that sentence. The waiting period was cut from five years to three by 2026 House Bill 1546, approved by the Governor on March 30, 2026, chaptered as Chapter 430 of the Laws of 2026 and effective July 1, 2026. The petitioner must give the district attorney ten days' written notice before any hearing. Mississippi caps the remedy hard: a person is eligible for only one felony expunction under that paragraph over an entire lifetime, and convictions arising from a common nucleus of operative facts count as one.

Twelve categories of felony cannot be expunged at all: a crime of violence under Section 97-3-2, first-degree arson, trafficking in controlled substances, a third, fourth, or subsequent DUI offense, felon in possession of a firearm, failure to register as a sex offender, voyeurism, witness intimidation, abuse, neglect or exploitation of a vulnerable person, embezzlement, felony procuring prostitution, and promoting prostitution. The last two were added by the same 2026 amendment.

Nothing found this session points to an automatic Clean Slate mechanism in Mississippi. The expunction process remains petition-based, meaning a person has to file and a court has to grant it. For a full eligibility walkthrough, see our Mississippi expungement guide.

Certified Copies and Practical Search Tips

The Clerk of Court for the relevant court and county is the custodian for certified copies of Mississippi court records. Where MEC access isn't practical or a case is in justice court, the public court terminal at the courthouse is a free, no-account alternative.

Because MEC only recently reached full statewide circuit, chancery, and county coverage, older records, and anything from before a particular county's conversion, may not be reflected in the electronic system yet. If an online search comes back empty, don't assume the record doesn't exist; contacting the clerk's office directly is often the more reliable path in Mississippi specifically, given how recent this rollout is.

Using Court Records Responsibly: The FCRA Rule

Checking your own case, or a case you have a genuine personal reason to look into, is a reasonable use of MEC or a courthouse terminal visit. Using either one, or a commercial people-search product pulling from the same underlying data, to screen a tenant or job applicant is governed separately by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), not by Mississippi's court-access rules.

Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c, most negative consumer-report information ages off after seven years, but § 1681c(a)(5) exempts criminal convictions from that window, so a conviction can be reported indefinitely unless a Mississippi expunction actually removes it from public access. In 2023, the FTC fined TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate $5.8 million for marketing public-records-based background reports for tenant and employment screening without complying with the FCRA, on the theory that a company marketing reports for that purpose is a consumer reporting agency under the law. Treat MEC and courthouse lookups as personal-use research, and run any real tenant or employment screening through a properly FCRA-compliant background check.

Related Mississippi Records Searches

This page is part of our broader Court Records by State guide, and our how to look up court records guide covers the general federal, state, and county fragmentation issue in more depth. If you're checking your own history before a job or a lease, see Mississippi background check laws. If you think you might have an active warrant rather than an ordinary case, see Mississippi warrant search. For records held by state agencies rather than the courts, see Mississippi public records laws.

Disclaimer

This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Court portals, fees, and coverage change without notice, and the Mississippi Judiciary is the only authoritative source for its own records. If you need a certified copy or have a legal question about a specific case, contact the clerk of court where the case was filed, or consult a licensed Mississippi attorney.

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Last updated: 2026-08-10. Portal facts and fees reflect their published status as of August 2026.