If you successfully completed probation and you are not currently serving any sentence, on probation, or being charged with any crime at this time, then upon successful application to the court where your prior conviction was entered, that court may vacate your guilty plea or verdict, enter a plea of not guilty, and dismiss your case. Thereafter, in most situations you may legally say it never happened. The purpose is to allow people to move on with their lives, particularly in the employment context, without forever being required to disclose past mistakes.
Click here to see the law used for typical DUI expungements: Penal Code Section 1203.4. If you are interested in reading a court case which describes in detail the different kinds of expungements available to most people, click the case at the end of this sentence and scroll down to the section of the case subtitled "General Principles Applicable to Dismissal of a Charge Under Penal Code Section 1203.4" People v. Holman (4th Dist. 2013).
Once your court probation is completed, and as long as you are not on probation in any other case, you may ask your Sonoma, Napa, or Marin County DUI attorney to file an expungement petition in Santa Rosa, Napa, San Rafael or another county seat, so that you can intentionally, legally, fail to disclose this conviction on a future application for employment in the private sector. Even government jobs and state licensing boards or other situations where disclosure might still be required will, nevertheless, almost always view a successful expungement as helpful, court-approved evidence of rehabilitation, and a respectful final outcome.
As you can see below, an expungement has limitations, so be sure to ask a DUI Expungement attorney before relying on this procedure to "erase" a DUI conviction, or "get it off your record," but nevertheless the results of a successful expungement can be extremely beneficial. Situations can arise unexpectedly which could have benefited from a properly submitted and executed expungement; it is well worth a reasonable fee even if you do not see the need at this moment. Discount national on-line services have been known to charge as little as $495, but dependable quality from local North Bay DUI lawyers typically range from $800 to $1500.
Benefits. An expungement of a Sonoma, Napa, Marin or other California DUI will result in the dismissal of the case which was expunged and allow you to answer that you have not been convicted of that DUI on applications for most non-government jobs (or jobs not requiring security clearances or government-issued licenses, certificates or permits). In addition, an expungement will prevent the conviction from being used to challenge your credibility if you testify as a witness in someone else's court case. In felony cases, an expungement is also the first step to obtain a pardon.
The best Sonoma DUI lawyers can tell you that on September 28, 2014, Governor Brown signed Assembly Bill 2396, which added language to Business & Professions Code Section 480 prohibiting a professional licensing board within the Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) from denying a license for an individual based solely on a conviction which has been expunged under Penal Code Section 1203.4. Although typically disclosure of a qualifying conviction is still required, nevertheless DCA Licensing Boards are prohibited from using just an expunged conviction as the sole basis to deny a license in many professions, such as Accountants, Barbers and Cosmetologists, Contractors, Dentists, Engineers, Nurses, Pharmacists, Psychologists, Real Estate Agents and many more. Note that a DCA board might still try to use the underlying conduct of a case, or other arguably bad conduct together with a conviction, to deny a license in a particular case, but it should be apparent that an expungement may very well facilitate a professional license for many people in many professions.
Limitations. A good Napa, Sonoma or Marin DUI attorney will tell you that an expungement of a DUI conviction will not erase or remove the conviction from your criminal history records, or seal or destroy those records, at the state or federal level. Rather those criminal records will show a new entry that the case was dismissed pursuant to the expungement law listed above. See example New Criminal Record Entry. An expungement will not prevent a DUI conviction from being used as a prior offense to increase the severity of punishment in a new case. An expungement will not prevent the conviction from being used to challenge your own credibility if you have a subsequent offense. An expungement will not prevent the conviction from being considered in government licensing, certification or permitting matters. An expungement will not prevent the conviction from being considered in immigration proceedings. An expungement will not eliminate sex offender registration requirements. An expungement will not reinstate an ex-felon's right to possess firearms (although a reduction to a misdemeanor first by a Fairfield, Vallejo or Vacaville judge may accomplish this in certain cases). Finally, a good DUI expungement lawyer should caution you that a DUI expungement does not change the appearance of, or delete any information from California DMV records, or otherwise alter or affect driving history or DMV reporting, on the DMV's separate and independent driving record history. A DUI expungement also does not automatically permit entry into the US through the US Global Entry program, or allow entry into Canada if such entry is otherwise barred or restricted, although recent anecdotal evidence suggests that Canadian policy and practices have been changing back and forth (see, Canadian Inadmissibility, and also Record Suspension.)
Because an expungement of a California DUI will not seal or otherwise remove the court file from public access, it is important to understand that anyone who is persistent, skilled, or knows where to look, will likely find the file or case information. This is especially true in light of the prevalence of excellent internet search engines and services (free and fee-based) which may always be able to produce court and media records of arrests and convictions.
However, Sonoma, Napa and Marin DUI lawyers will agree, and so it is worth repeating, that even if such records may be found, or if disclosure of an expunged conviction is required, or if use of an expunged conviction is still permitted in certain situations, nonetheless the fact that you obtained an expungement from a Santa Rosa, San Rafael or Napa judge is typically viewed as the proper and best means of securing an officially-stamped acknowledgement of rehabilitation and a respectful final outcome which should reduce the weight and significance of the conviction in many contexts. Unexpected situations may arise which could have benefited from a properly completed and submitted Sonoma County DUI expungement; it is well worth a reasonable fee for a North Bay DUI lawyer to properly accomplish an expungement for you even if you do not see the need at this moment.
In 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB 1076, making many DUI expungements automatic for convictions which occurred after January 1, 2021, for those people who complete their term of DUI probation without revocation, and are not currently serving any other sentence or facing any other criminal charges, with few exceptions which may include prosecutor objection. The new laws will require the justice department to review statewide criminal justice databases, identify persons eligible for automatic expungements, and grant that relief by dismissing the DUI conviction, adding a note in the person’s criminal record stating “relief granted,” and notifying the court, who in turn will stop disclosing the DUI conviction in most situations (except, most notably, a criminal justice agency).
Good DUI expungement lawyers will explain that existing law allows a defendant to file papers in court and petition a judge to withdraw a plea of guilty or no contest and enter a plea of not guilty, if the defendant has fulfilled the conditions of probation and is not serving a sentence or on probation or charged with any offense. If this expungement petition is granted, then the court will dismiss the case, typically allowing the defendant to legally fail to disclose the DUI conviction on most employment and housing applications. The new laws, codified in Penal Code Section 1203.425 (and for arrest records, Penal Code Section 851.93), essentially make this process and resulting benefits automatic without the requirement to individually file a DUI expungement petition.
The best DUI expungement attorneys will caution that expungements under the old and new laws do not "seal" or "mask" or "erase" a DUI conviction, and there are important limitations to this relief (for example, expungements do nothing to your DMV driving record), but generally the purpose is for the justice system to acknowledge your rehabilitation and allow you to move on from a DUI conviction without having to admit the incident any longer or suffer further penalties and disabilities from the conviction.
If you choose, you can accomplish the initial work yourself, by obtaining a court "docket" history of your case(s) from the county criminal court clerk's office.
Fill out an official expungement form; click on the links below and fill out the forms online, print them and send them together with your docket(s) to a DUI lawyer such as Jake to review, comment and process it through the legal system for you. If you are doing this yourself without a DUI attorney helping you, then you would well-advised to at least consult with a lawyer after carefully reviewing and preparing the proper forms described in this discussion, and before submitting the completed forms to the court at the location described above.
In addition, as you will see below, the law now requires that you appeal to the judge's sense of justice in the petition for expungement of a past DUI. Therefore a good DUI expungement lawyer will ask you to write a brief description of the facts and circumstances of the conviction, any explanations surrounding unsuccessful periods of probation, and a short detailed account of your life from the date of conviction to present day. You can also begin the process of collecting any evidence of rehabilitation in the community by making copies of diplomas, church letters, employment references, evidence of charitable accomplishments, and letters of recommendation from friends and community leaders, etc. An additional important element of any good petition is an explanation and any evidence of substantial hardship created by the conviction(s) sought to be expunged.
The goal is for you and your DUI expungement attorney to present a compelling series of facts and arguments for granting you relief from the effects of a past mistake by showing you are reformed and you have become an outstanding and/or respectable contributor in society, but the conviction continues to create a hardship from which you wish to be relieved. The best DUI attorneys will place your personal statement into a declaration (see form link below), attach any letters and evidence, and submit everything, including the Petition for Expungement and an unsigned form of Order, to the court for processing and ultimate decision.
DUI Lawyers Understand Legal Forms and Procedure. If you don't know the information requested in the forms, you can have a local DUI lawyer research and process the forms on your behalf. In addition, hiring a local DUI defense attorney may be necessary to successfully challenge a court's routine denial of expungement if the District Attorney's office continues to automatically "reject" DUI expungement petitions as that office has done in the past.
DUI Lawyers Understand How DUI Expungements are Different. You know you have the right DUI lawyer when he/she can properly articulate and explain to you that the expungement laws changed in 2008 to eliminate the absolute right to expungements in DUI cases (and certain other driving offenses listed in VC 12810(a)-(e)), so that a court is required to use its discretion to grant expungement petitions only in the interests of justice (see, PC 1203.4(c)), as opposed to before the law changed when most DUI petitioners who successfully completed their term of probation had an absolute right to have the petition granted. A DUI attorney with a working understanding of this change in the law may be a great advantage to properly presenting your history and current situation to the Superior Court, in order to effectively appeal to a judge's sense of justice and obtain for you this valuable closure.
Typically There is Only One Chance to Get it Right. DUI lawyers understand that courts usually will not allow individuals to keep trying to get it right. If an expungement petition is denied by the Superior Court, then it is unlikely the court will receive a new petition attempting to correct or add information, unless changed circumstances can be shown in a later petition. Therefore it is critical that a Petition for Expungement be properly submitted the very first time, when the chances of success are greatest.
Most expungements take approximately one week for a good DUI expungement attorney to process, and once submitted, another 12-15 weeks or more for the court to review and approve. Click here for the fillable forms: Petition For Dismissal ("Expungement"), Order For Dismissal, and Declaration Form.
Many people don't know that a juvenile criminal record, including a Sonoma, Napa or Marin County DUI conviction obtained as a juvenile (arrested while under 18 years old), might not have been automatically sealed after reaching 18 years old, but such conviction records can, and should be sealed so that they are not available to the public, and cannot be used by a prosecutor to increase your sentence in a new case. Fairfield, Vallejo and Vacaville DUI lawyers have seen new DUI cases with significantly increased penalty exposure due to past juvenile DUIs and under-21 DUIs which were never sealed. For more information about sealing a DUI conviction suffered as a juvenile, or sealing other juvenile offenses, contact the Sonoma County Juvenile Court, and see a general description on the Official California Courts website, Sealing Juvenile Records. Discuss your unique case with a DUI attorney before deciding on a course of action.
Attorney Paul Heinrich, Geneva, Illinois
Dave Jake Schwartz is an Honors Graduate from UC Hastings Law School, and UC Davis, former Federal Judicial Clerk, and Nationally Qualified Sobriety Tests Practitioner. Member of the California Bar for 30 years, North Bay resident for over 20 years, handles only DUI cases, including thousands of North Bay DUIs and DMV hearings: first/multiple offenders, minors, seniors, tourists, undocumented immigrants, veterans, probation violations, suspended license, public intoxication, open container, minor in possession, child endangerment, collisions, hit and run, evading, resisting arrest.
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