crooked thing is..your not supposed to be a felon after your sentence discharges the offense.
you would be an "ex felon" ie "former felon" which is a convention of speech... not a legal standing.
After the due process of executing sentence discharges the original criminal charge, your legal standing is rehabilitated to what it was before you broke the law "legalis homo" ie- lawful man one who stands "rectus in curia"... upright before the court, with the right to the full benefit of the law.
You cannot separate Western law from certain theological precepts.
Western law ie common law or natural law is born of an attempt knowing man is corrupt and imperfect to model the laws of man as best we can upon the divine and perfect laws of natures God.
There is God's realm and god's law..then there is man's realm.
"Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what it god's..."
That wasn't just a commandment about Money...
people are born free and unbound.
If they come under the rule of law requiring due process, due process must leave the person as it received the person for due process or justice to have been complete.
With minor crimes, the sentence must make boot if possible for the loss of the victim and be punitive.
God's law is for the purpose of convicting you of your sin so that you can change your ways and receive his mercy.
God determines the outcome
Man's law is for the purpose of securing our god given liberties (or for the atheist liberties in common)
With a jury of peers, your fellow man determines the outcome.
Since you ultimately belong to God and he created you free, then your peers in this world have an obligation to return you to your maker as he made you.
Rehabilitation leaves you innocent of earthly crimes when your life here ends.
It could be that your peers forgive you , or they punish and forgive you.
When your spirit stands before your maker you will have one accuser, and one intercessor arguing God's law not man's law...
It's the maker's law that you leave this world as you entered it and it is written that failure to forgive your peer is itself a sin.
So the rehabilitation of a free and lawful person who has broken the law after he has been convicted of infamy to free and lawful, is the highest due process the law can achieve leaving both the accused and the accuser clean of earthly sin.
A legal process that is put into execution and yet leaves a person un-absolved of his convicted offense and leaves the victim or his peers burdened with with the sin of failure to forgive... is not by providence's standards a Just or righteous legal process.
With bootless crimes...crimes where there can be no restitution because the victim has been killed or seriously harmed the sentence usually requires the life of the offender, by incarceration or by execution.
Every sentence must have a date of origin, a final date, and the conditions and terms must be explicit. they cannot imply or leave anything open to later interpretation to be a lawful sentence.
The sentence must be complete and finished before it can be executed.
Life sentences and death sentences still have an end date... the death of the person.
A sentence cannot lawfully be perpetual.
A debtor who's debt has been settled is no longer a debtor
A criminal who's sentence has discharged the conviction is no longer a criminal.
This is how justice has always been with all crimes.
With felony it's the same.
A "felony" is a new classification of crime determined arbitrarily by the fact that the conviction could have resulted in a sentence lasting a year or more.
felonies were invented about 100 years ago when the nation was having a problem with gangs
A felon who's sentence has discharged the conviction is no longer a felon.
If the law is to deprive a person of any rights it must be explicit in the sentence. it isn't lawful to classify people for the purpose of infringing rights. the protection of law by the constitution must be equal protection thus rectus in curia applies to all persons not under conviction.
