Vacating Criminal Convictions

In this day and age, it is more important than ever to have a clean record. If you have a prior conviction that is affecting your immigration status, you may have options to have it removed from your criminal record. One of those options in California is a petition pursuant to Penal Code section 1437.7, which allows for a non-citizen, to petition the court, to have a conviction removed where either the attorney failed to represent them adequately, or they did not understand the immigration consequences of their plea agreement.

This is a powerful motion, that the California legislature has enabled, allowing a California Superior Court judge the opportunity to remove a conviction whereby in might otherwise cause a person to be deported, denied citizenship, or excluded from admission to the United States altogether. At the Mitchell Law Group, we have been filing petitions pursuant to Penal Code section 1437.7 since the law was enacted in 2016 under Governor Brown.

Unlike a regular expungement (see Penal Code 1203.4), a conviction removed pursuant to this section, is truly vacated. That means, it's as though the conviction never happened. This is highly important for immigration purposes, because a ceremonial expungement, like the one under Penal Code section 1203.4 will not work, most of the time, for immigration purposes.

We have had many successful cases and enabled our clients to clean up their record for immigration purposes. If you find yourself in this situation and are concerned about the immigration consequences of a prior criminal conviction, either in Fresno County, Madera, Tulare, Kings County, or Merced, or anywhere else in the Central Valley, we can help. Give us a call today and we would be happy to discuss how we might be of assistance in helping you remove your criminal conviction.