CURE Counseling & Assessment Training Centre has provided a Pre-Trial Diversion Program since 2007. CURE has provided hundreds of people an opportunity to work through an approved program to have their first offense expunged from their record. CURE works with your District Attorney or Solicitor General to help remove the first offense by completing our program. At the end of the program you receive a certificate of completion.
In many jurisdictions, individuals arrested for the first time are given an option for keeping the crime off of their record without having to go to trial. Pre-trial Diversion is a program for certain first-time offenders to give them a second chance to avoid being marked by a felony conviction for the rest of their lives. It is known by a variety of names, such as Pre-trial Diversion, Pre-trial Intervention, Deferred Prosecution, Withheld Adjudication, Good Behavior, Withdraw and File and Withheld Sentencing.
An individual who is charged with a first criminal offense of a relatively minor nature (charges like murder or rape are not going to qualify) and who appears to be an individual who is not likely to be a repeat offender may be given the option of pretrial diversion. If the person accepts the offer, then he or she will enter a plea of guilty to the criminal offense, but the judge will not enter an order adjudicating him or her guilty. A person is not guilty until a judge issues an order finding that person guilty, so at this point the person is in limbo between pleading guilty and being convicted.
Rather than find the person guilty, the judge withholds adjudication for a certain period of time, and places the defendant under certain restrictions similar to being on probation. If the individual complies with the terms and conditions of the pretrial diversion agreement, then at the end of the time period the charges are dismissed and the person is not convicted of the crime. This enables someone who made a one-time stupid mistake to get another chance at life with a clean record.
However, if the defendant violates the terms of the deferred prosecution agreement, then he or she will be brought back to court for a sentencing hearing. Common ways a person could violate the program include getting a new arrest, failing a drug test, or failing to complete a court-ordered treatment program. Because the person already entered a guilty plea to the charge, he or she no longer has the right to go to trial on the case. Thus, if the judge determines that the defendant failed to complete the pretrial intervention program, then the defendant will be convicted and sentenced for the crime.