COLLATERAL CONSEQUENCES

When pleading guilty to a criminal charge, there are various obvious consequences that will flow from such a guilty plea.  Prison, jail time with probation, loss of various civil rights, etc.  If the defendant is not a citizen, he may face serious deportation issues as well.  But there are also collateral consequences that are not so obvious, and are never mentioned in court when a defendant pleads guilty.  I am talking about serious consequences that might result for a defendant who has a profession which is licensed by the state.  For example, if a lawyer or doctor pleads guilty to a crime involving moral turpitude, the defendant might have his professional license suspended or even revoked, depending on the seriousness of the offense.

I recently represented a client before an administrative judge who pled guilty to petty theft, paid a fine, and received a three year unsupervised probation.  Just about as minimal offense as there is, but because it involved a theft it is defined as a crime of moral turpitude.  The client was a car salesman, and as such had to be licensed by the California Dept. of Motor Vehicles.  Incredibly, his license to work was suspended by the DMV once the agency received notice of the conviction, and he has not been able to work for months since the suspension.  A hearing was set before an administrative judge last month to determine when, if ever, he will get his license back.  The deputy Attorney General representing the DMV was extremely aggressive in trying to convince the judge that the client should not be allowed to recover his license.  It was like something out of a Charles Dickens novel...the crime the defendant committed has nothing to do with being a car salesman.  The client is married and has an a two year old daughter with cerebral palsy; his wife can't work because she has an abdominal hernia and also has to take care of her daughter.  Right now the client is living off the kindness of relatives, and who knows when, if ever, he will be allowed to work in this states as his chosen profession.  The deputy A.G.'s recommendation was that the client should move to Arizona where there are no licensing requirements for car salesmen!

This kind of insane government regulation is enough to make any sentient being join the Tea Party.  I'm sure if the client's trial lawyer had realized the severity of the collateral consequence resulting from the client's guilty plea another more humane disposition might well have been achieved.  The moral of the story?...make sure before pleading guilty in a criminal case that you are aware of all possible collateral consequences which might result from the guilty plea and which might very well ruin the rest of your life, even if there is no jail time involved in the conviction.