Facing an arrest and criminal charges in California can have serious repercussions. A conviction for a felony or a misdemeanor may mean facing time in jail or prison, hefty fines, and potential deportation if you are an immigrant. However, the consequences of a conviction will go beyond these criminal penalties.
Even after serving your sentence, the conviction will enter your criminal record, accessible to individuals who perform a background check on you. This could impact your chances of securing employment, retaining a professional license, and exercising voting rights. Fortunately, California law allows you to clear your criminal record and avoid the collateral consequences of a conviction through legal actions like expungement.
Under California PC 1203.4, an expungement involves withdrawing your guilty or no-contest plea with a not-guilty plea before dismissing the case. The process of clearing your records through an expungement is lengthy and complicated. Therefore, you must hire and retain a criminal attorney to guide you.
An Overview of Expungement to Clear Your Criminal Record
An expungement is a post-conviction relief that releases you from the disabilities of your criminal conviction. This type of relief is available for individuals with felony or misdemeanor convictions on their records. A criminal conviction can have devastating effects on your personal and professional lives.
This is because potential employers, landlords, and professional licensing bodies will run a routine background check, which can reveal your past convictions. When these convictions are used against you, they can affect your quality of life.
Expunging your conviction under California Penal Code 1203.4 helps you avoid these consequences. An expungement of a criminal record in California involves the withdrawal of a guilty-to-no-contest plea. Your plea is then changed to not guilty before the case is dismissed. After an expungement, you can truthfully answer no when asked about past convictions.
Who is Eligible to Clear Their Criminal Record under Penal Code 1203.4?
An expungement is a legal process that allows you to clean up your criminal record and reduce the impact of a conviction on your life. However, you must recognize that not all individuals with a criminal record will be eligible for an expungement. California law sets eligibility criteria you must meet before filing your petition for expungement.
The eligibility for expungement varies depending on whether you seek to expunge a felony or a misdemeanor, and they include:
Successful Completion of Probation
After a conviction for a criminal offense in California, the court could sentence you to incarceration, fines, and sometimes probation. Probation is an alternative to jail or prison time. With a probation sentence, you can serve a portion of your sentence on community service.
Probation can be formal or informal, depending on the nature of your charges. Formal probation lasts up to five years, while informal probation lasts up to three years. When sentencing you to probation, the judge will impose conditions that you must follow while on probation.
If you have completed your probation, you will be eligible for an expungement of your conviction. This means that you must have served the full probation term and followed through with the probation conditions.
Since completing your probation is essential to clearing your criminal record, you can petition for an early probation termination. California PC 1203.3 allows the court to terminate your probation before the full term elapses.
If you are sentenced to misdemeanor probation, you must serve up to one year of the sentence before petitioning for an early release. For defendants serving felony probation, an early termination can be granted after eighteen months of the sentence. Your chances of receiving an early probation termination increase if you have met all the conditions of your probation.
Other circumstances that could impact your petition include:
- The severity of the conduct that caused your conviction
- Your criminal history
- Your ability to follow through with the remaining probation term
- Insight from the district attorney
Not Currently Serving a Sentence
When you want to clear your criminal record in an expungement, you must not be serving a sentence for the underlying offense or another offense. If you were sentenced to jail time for your conviction, you must have served and completed your sentence before filing a petition. Additionally, you should not be serving probation for another offense.
No Pending Criminal Charges
You cannot expunge a conviction when you have additional charges against you. Therefore, in this situation, you must fight to have the charges dismissed or dropped before filing a petition under California Penal Code 1203.4.
Compliance with Court Orders
In addition to incarceration, the court imposes multiple orders following your criminal conviction in California. This could include court fines, payment of victim restitution, and attending counseling, among others. You must have completed these court obligations before your record is expunged.
Sentenced to Jail and Probation for a Felony
If you seek to expunge a felony conviction, you must have been sentenced to jail time and probation instead of prison. You cannot expunge a criminal conviction if you serve a prison sentence. If you face charges for a felony that is a wobbler, you can petition the court to have it reduced to a misdemeanor. This ensures that you qualify to clear your record.
You may not be eligible to clear your record through an expungement if you were convicted of the following charges:
- Sodomy against a child under California PC 286(c)
- Lewd acts with a child under PC 288
- Statutory rape under PC 261.5
- Oral Copulation with a Child
Process of Expungement
You can clear your criminal record through an expungement by following the following steps:
Hire a Criminal Defense Attorney
The process of expunging your criminal record can be paperwork intensive and confusing. Any errors or omissions in your application can result in the denial of your petition. This makes it important to have a skilled criminal defense attorney guide you through your PC 1203.4 petition. The roles of your attorney in your expungement process include:
- Gather relevant evidence.
- File your petition.
- Protect your constitutional rights.
- Represent you at the expungement hearing.
Fill out Proper Forms
Most expungement application forms are available online, and you can download and fill them out. With the expungement petition form, you must indicate relevant information about your expungement case.
Some of the information you can include is evidence of your completed or terminated probation. Felony convictions cannot be expunged until they are reduced to misdemeanors. Therefore, you must present the evidence of this petition with your expungement forms.
If you seek to expunge multiple convictions, you must fill out forms for each conviction that needs to be cleared.
File the Expungement Petition
When the proper forms are filled out, you can submit them to court with the help of your criminal defense attorney. Every court has specific fees that you must pay for an expungement. You can deliver the petition in person or mail it to the court. After reviewing your petition, the court will respond within five months.
Your chances of an expungement increase when the prosecutor or district attorney supports your motion. Therefore, the prosecution must review your petition before a hearing and determine whether you support or object to it.
Prepare and Attend the Expungement Hearing
Whether or not you must attend your expungement hearing varies depending on your case. If the judge mandates that you be present during this hearing, your attorney will notify you about it. There is no jury in the expungement hearing. Instead, the judge will determine whether you deserve to expunge your conviction.
At your hearing, your attorney can point out the following reasons why you deserve to have your record cleared:
- You have completed your probation without violations.
- You have held down a job since your release from jail.
- You meet other requirements for an expungement.
- You have been rehabilitated from the conduct that resulted in your conviction.
After the expungement hearing, the judge will inform you of their decision. You can file a petition to seal the record if your expungement is granted. This eliminates the conviction from your record.
Refile the Expungement Petition
If the court denies your expungement petition, you can refile the petition after six months of the denial. Some of the reasons why the judge can deny your expungement include:
- Pending criminal charges or sentences
- A powerful objection case from the prosecution
- Failure to meet the deadlines for filing and appearing in court
- Overlooking critical information in the petition-filing process
Before refiling your petition, you must correct the mistakes that resulted in the denial of the initial petition.
Benefits of Clearing Your Record through an Expungement
Some of the benefits you will enjoy from expunging your criminal record in Los Angeles include:
Ease of Finding Employment
For most individuals, the most valuable benefit of expunging their criminal record is obtaining meaningful employment. Although an expunged conviction will not be erased permanently from your record, an employer cannot use it to legally discriminate against you.
Additionally, an expunged conviction may reveal that you have taken the appropriate steps for rehabilitation from the crimes that caused your conviction.
Ease of Obtaining a Professional License
A relief under Penal Code 1203.4 is important to individuals seeking professional licenses. Most license bodies will examine your criminal record before issuing or renewing your license. Even after an expungement, the board mandates that you disclose the conviction. However, an expunged conviction may carry less weight.
Personal Satisfaction
In addition to impacting your career and ability to obtain employment, a criminal conviction can taint your reputation. This will affect how different people interact with you. Many individuals express a sense of relief after a successful expungement.
Although expunging a conviction will not erase your past, it allows you to move on from your mistakes and have a fresh start in life. This offense is a form of personal satisfaction that cannot be quantified.
Improve your Credibility in Court
If you have a criminal conviction on your record and serve as a court witness, the opposing side can use the conviction to question your character and credibility. However, if your conviction has been expunged, it cannot be used to impeach your credibility, allowing you to effectively give your testimony in another case.
Ease of Finding a Place to Live
Most landlords will look into your criminal record before signing a lease. If you have a criminal conviction, your application could be denied or subject you to a higher rent. However, you will have no trouble applying for housing with an expunged record.
Setbacks of an Expungement in California
An expungement offers numerous benefits for individuals with criminal convictions on their record. However, there are limitations to what PC 1203.4 relief can do, including:
An Expungement Does not Overturn a Driver’s License Suspension
A suspension or revocation of your driver’s license is one of the most dreaded consequences of a conviction for crimes like drunk driving, reckless driving, and vehicular manslaughter. Suspension of your driver’s license may be triggered by the Department of Motor Vehicles when you lose your DMV hearing or by the court after your conviction.
While an expungement will reduce the impact of a conviction on your record, it does not overturn your license suspension. Therefore, even after a conviction, your driving privileges will remain suspended.
Your Gun Rights will not be Restored
If you face a conviction for a violent crime or drug-related offense, the court may order that you surrender your firearms to the law enforcement department. Additionally, convicted felons have no right to own firearms in California. While you can expunge a felony conviction or have it reduced to a misdemeanor, your gun rights will not be restored.
You could lose your gun rights for ten to twenty years or a lifetime, depending on the nature and severity of your conviction. Even after the successful expungement of your conviction, your gun rights cannot be restored. Instead, you must wait until you are eligible to have your rights restored.
An Expunged Conviction is Treated as a “Prior”
For some offenses, a prior conviction for a similar charge will increase the severity of your current charge. For example, you will face harsher penalties for subsequent drunk driving offenses committed within ten years.
A simple DUI is a misdemeanor you can expunge after completing your probation sentence. An expunged DUI cannot be used against you by employers and has less impact on your criminal record. However, it will still count as a prior if you face a subsequent arrest and charges.
If you expunge your first offense and commit another one within ten years, you will be charged and convicted as a second-time offender.
An Expungement Does not End Your Obligation to Register AS a Sex Offender
After a conviction for certain sex crimes like rape, sodomy, oral copulation with a minor, and statutory rape, the court will order you to register as a sex offender. This involves putting your personal information in the sex offender registry, where it is open to public access. As a sex offender, you will be limited to where you can work and live. Additionally, being a sex offender ruins your reputation.
If you expunge your criminal conviction that resulted in the sex offender registration, your obligation to register and renew your sex offender registration will not end.
What Shows Up in My Criminal Record After a Successful Expungement?
Expunging a criminal conviction does not erase it from your record. After the dismissal, your record shows that you were arrested and charged with the crimes, but the conviction has since been expunged. Individuals who understand the Penal Code will know you were convicted of the expunged offense.
You are not obligated to disclose an expunged criminal conviction to employers or law enforcement officers. However, the conviction will be discovered when the employers check your background.
If you seek to erase your criminal record, you can file a petition to seal it. Under California Penal Code 851.87, a sealed criminal record is destroyed and inaccessible to the public. You can effectively have your record sealed under the following circumstances:
- You were arrested, and no charges were filed.
- The statute of limitations for filing a misdemeanor or felony charge against you for your offense has expired.
- The prosecution filed charges against you, and the case was dismissed.
- The charges were filed, and you were acquitted.
- You faced a conviction, which was later overturned in an appeal.
- Your charges were dismissed after completing a diversion or pre-sentencing program.
Find a Competent Santa Ana Criminal Defense Attorney Near Me
Criminal convictions in California are a public record and can be accessed by potential employers, your professional licensing board, and the public. A criminal conviction can ruin your reputation and affect your career for many years.
If you seek to avoid or lessen the impact of the conviction on your life, you must take proactive measures like expunging your record. You can clear your criminal records through an expungement if you meet the eligibility criteria. This means you must have completed your probation and not currently face charges for another offense.
Expunging your conviction involves filing a petition and attending an expungement hearing. If your expungement process is successful, you can truthfully say no when asked about prior convictions. Additionally, the expunged conviction will less impact your professional and personal lives.
The complexity of your expungement process in Santa Ana, CA, will vary depending on the nature of your charges and the specific circumstances of your case. At Darwish Law, we will help you determine your eligibility for an expungement and guide you through filing your PC 1203.4 petition for a favorable outcome. Contact us at 714-887-4810 to discuss your case.