Public Defender Identifies 1,300 San Francisco Residents Now Eligible for Liberation of Criminal Records

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The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office has identified 1,300 people who may be eligible for expunged convictions under the new California law. The new Fresh Start Act, effective January 1, could dramatically increase the number of San Francisco residents who can waive their past criminal convictions in 2023.

The new law removes the victim’s restitution as an obstacle to the removal of an old conviction.

Written by State Senator Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, this is another step in a cascade of recent California laws that empower people who want to keep their past convictions private and avoid court fines.

People convicted in court often pursue their crimes for years after they have served their sentence. Criminal convictions show up during background checks, causing problems when applying for a job or housing. That’s why many are seeking to have their records deleted, a generic term for a collection of lawsuits Californians can take to make their criminal history less public.

Judges used to be able to deny removal requests if the person was still in restitution debt for their crime, but the Fresh Start Act bans this practice.

Kelly Pretzer was thrilled when the law was passed. As a Deputy Public Defender in San Francisco, she had many clients who wanted to pay off their restitution debt but were unable to find a good job due to a red flag in their background checks.

“We kind of fell into this Catch-22 where the best thing they could do to make more money was get their exemptions, but they couldn’t do that because they didn’t have enough money to pay restitution. Prezer said.

After the law went into effect, Pretzer identified about 1,300 of her office’s clients who had previously been blocked from deletion due to outstanding restitution debt. She began a detailed review of each case.

Cases in Pretzer’s original review include convictions in 1995 and most recently in 2019. According to data Pretzer shared with The Standard, unpaid victim awards in these cases range from a few hundred dollars to $200,000. .

Getting deleted doesn’t erase a person’s restitution debt, but the California District Attorneys Association opposed the Fresh Start Act, citing concerns that once people’s records are cleared, they’ll have even less incentive to pay their victim.

When the Fresh Start Act passed through the legislature last year, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins continued to oppose exceptions where defendants had to pay damages to victims.

But now that the law has been passed, the San Francisco attorney’s office no longer takes outstanding restitution into account when reviewing removal petitions, said Randy Quesada, a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s office.

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“This law will empower poor and low-income petitioners to continue their lives and achieve better outcomes for themselves and their families,” Quesada said. “Ultimately, the law does not relieve them of their responsibility to pay the restitution they owe to victims, but, importantly, allows cases to be dropped so they can be in a better position to pay in the future.”

“We took on the passage of the Fresh Start Act to help people reintegrate into society after facing the criminal justice system,” Viner said in a statement. “Because the law went into effect, it’s good to see that many of my constituents now have that chance.”

One such member is Ebony Nolan, who was convicted of a felony in 2007 when she was 19 years old. Last year, prosecutors blocked her removal request because she owed the court about $700 in victim damages. But after the Fresh Start Act went into effect, a judge officially signed the order to remove her entry earlier this month.

“I thank God that all this is crossed out,” Nolan said. “I can apply for more jobs that I want and my entry won’t come back [showing] criminal offense”.

While it’s unclear exactly how many people the new law could affect, according to crime data, more than 100,000 people have been convicted of felonies in California in recent years. Many of these people are required to pay victim compensation—in fact, an unpublished study of California cases across 15 counties by Delaney Greene, clinical director of the UC Berkeley School of Law, found that the average amount defendants owe for crime victims is $10,000. dollars.

As of August last year, people convicted of crimes by the San Francisco Supreme Court alone owed crime victims more than $11.8 million, according to the court.

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