Expungement
California Law allows a person to withdraw his or her guilty or no contest plea only after they have successfully completed the probation period. A person must meet several conditions to qualify for “expungement”. The most crucial condition is that they complete their probationary period successfully. To meet this requirement, they must successfully pay all fines and fees ordered by the court, and all restitution must be paid to any victims. The defendant must not have violated their probation in any event and must not have incurred any new convictions or be arrested for any new offense while on probation.
When all of the conditions have been satisfied, the next step is to file a petition with the San Diego Superior Court requesting that the DUI conviction be expunged from the defendant’s record. Most courts will require that fees be paid for the filing of the legal petition. Also, the petition must be submitted in the proper legal form and is required to be submitted to the appropriate agencies in order to be reviewed by the Judge. A San Diego Attorney should be involved to ensure the petition for expungement is filed correctly. If the form was not completed correctly, or another technical rule was not followed, the judge will typically reject the petition.
If the petition for an expungement has been granted by the court this would allow, in most cases, the person to state that he or she has not been convicted of a crime when applying for private employment. At this point, the case will then have been dismissed. To obtain more information, please consult Penal Code 1203.4.
