The California Legislature had a busy year in 2020 as it concerns criminal laws. Several significant changes in criminal law will go into effect at the beginning of 2021. I will discuss some of those changes in future blogs but for this post, I want to focus on AB-3234.
AB-3234 was signed into law and is codified in the Penal Code at section 1001.95. Effective January 1, 2021, it portends sweeping changes in the way misdemeanors are prosecuted in this state…or maybe a better way of stating it is “not prosecuted.” For all but a few misdemeanor crimes, this new law takes the prosecution of misdemeanors out of the prosecutor’s domain and allows the court to order a diversion, rather than prosecute the crime. For almost all misdemeanor crimes, the defendant can request the court order a diversion, which if granted, allows the defendant to avoid any prosecution at all. In fact, if the defendant successfully completes the terms and conditions of the diversion, the crime is as if it never happened because the arrest for the crime will be deemed to have never occurred.
The misdemeanor crimes that will not qualify for diversion are few. They are Penal Code section 290 crimes (crimes that require registration as a sex offender), sexual assault (Penal Code section 273.5), domestic violence (Penal Code section 243(e)), and stalking (Penal Code section 646.9). This is a rather odd list when you consider that other misdemeanors such as elder and child abuse, DUI, misdemeanor assault (other than domestic violence), just to name a few, are not on the list of excluded misdemeanors. (There is a push to amend the law to include DUI as one of the excluded offenses, but for now, it is eligible for diversion under the new law.)