Hi, my name is Givelle Lamano and I’m the principal attorney at Lamano Law Office. The goal of this video is to tell you what you need to do to clean up your record. There are generally two avenues to clean up your criminal record. The first one is called a penal code 1203.4 and the second one is called a penal code 851.8.
The first one is called a motion to dismiss in the interest of justice. It’s important for you to understand what this is going to look like on your criminal record. In the event that an employer or somebody who’s doing a background check wants to look you up.
What’s going to end up showing is the year and the date that you were arrested. The year and the date that you were convicted. And then finally this 1203.4 motion which says that the charges were dismissed in the interest of justice.
Now, if you’re applying for a job it’s very possible that a sophisticated human resources manager will know exactly what a 1203.4 is. In other words, they’ll know that the charges weren’t dismissed but that you filed to get it off of your record at a later date.
However, some people are not that sophisticated and in filling out an application you might actually be able to check the box that says have you been charged with a crime, and say yes, and in the portion where it asks you to explain you can say you got the charges dismissed. It’s a bit vague, and if your employer or somebody who’s asking you wants to ask about it, you can explain what a 1203.4 motion is, and what the purpose of that motion is and that is to dismiss the charges in the interest of justice as approved by the court.
The second avenue is what’s called a penal code 851.8 which is also known as a motion for factual innocence. This is a situation where you get arrested and you get charged with a crime and the charges are dismissed against you because there was no factual basis to show that you actually committed a crime.
It happens all the time. People are wrongfully arrested. Wrongfully accused, and then they have this arrest record that they want to get off of their back. In order to do that, this is the avenue that you want to file, which is a penal code 851.8. Both these motions take some time in court. It could take anywhere between 45 to 90 days to draft the paperwork, file the paperwork, get a date in court, and finally have somebody argue that on your behalf. And generally, this is an attorney. You could potentially do this on your own, but you do take a little bit of the risk because you’re expected to know the law and meet the standards that the court requires in order to potentially grant these motions.
So at the end of the day what I recommend is if you want to take care of you clearing up your record, the best thing you can do is contact us, tell us what type of record you have, what county it happened in, and why you want to get this done. We’ll likely present this to the court in the most positive light so that you get the result that you want and that is a clean record.
Thanks for listening and give us a call if there are any other questions that you might have.
