Getting a Felony Reduced to a Misdemeanor in California (Penal Code 17(b))

Last reviewed: August 2026

Not every California felony has to stay a felony. A large group of them can be turned into misdemeanors by a judge, and when that happens the law treats the crime as a misdemeanor from then on. This page explains which crimes qualify, when you can ask, what the change really buys you, and the three things it does not fix. That last part matters, because the internet is confident about all three and the confidence is not earned.

The short version

• It only works on certain crimes. Lawyers call them “wobblers.” The law does not use that word.
• A judge has to agree. There is no form that does it automatically and no box you tick.
• If it works, the crime is a misdemeanor “for all purposes.” That phrase is in the statute itself.
• It works going forward, not backward. It does not undo things that already happened to you.
• It is a different thing from expungement, and if both are available, order matters.
• Owing money cannot be the reason for a denial.

What a “wobbler” is, and why that word is not in the law

Some California crimes can be charged and punished either way, as a felony or as a misdemeanor, depending on what the judge decides. Lawyers call those crimes wobblers, because they wobble between the two.

Open the statute and you will not find the word. Penal Code 17(b) describes the idea instead. It applies “when a crime is punishable, in the discretion of the court, either by imprisonment in the state prison or imprisonment in a county jail under the provisions of subdivision (h) of Section 1170, or by fine or imprisonment in the county jail.”

Translated: if the law that you were convicted under gave the judge a choice between felony punishment and misdemeanor punishment, you have a wobbler. If the law only ever allowed felony punishment, you do not, and no amount of good behavior changes that. Lawyers call those “straight felonies,” and Penal Code 17 does not reach them.

You cannot tell which one you have by looking at your sentence. A straight felony does not become a wobbler because you got probation instead of prison. It depends on the words of the statute you were convicted under, so this is the first thing to have a lawyer check.

What the reduction actually does

Here is the good news, and it is better than most people expect, because it comes from the statute rather than from a lawyer’s optimism.

Penal Code 17(b) says that in the listed situations, the crime “is a misdemeanor for all purposes.” Not “is treated like.” Not “counts as.” Is.

So on a job application, a housing application, a licensing form, and in most later court proceedings, you have a misdemeanor conviction, because that is what it now is.

The situations where it can happen

Penal Code 17(b) lists five. Most people reading this page care about one of them.

The common one is the third. It applies “when the court grants probation to a defendant and at the time of granting probation, or on application of the defendant or probation officer thereafter, the court declares the offense to be a misdemeanor.”

Read that slowly, because two things are packed into it.

• You had to have been granted probation. This route does not exist for someone who was never put on probation.
• The judge can do it later, on your application. That is the word “thereafter.” You are not stuck with what happened at sentencing.

The other four cover different moments: an automatic reduction when the judgment imposes something other than a prison or county-jail-felony term, a youth facility situation, the prosecutor choosing to file the case as a misdemeanor, and a decision by the court before trial. The full detail is in the dropdown below.

Read more: all five routes, in the statute’s own words, and what changed recently

Penal Code 17(b) says a qualifying crime “is a misdemeanor for all purposes under the following circumstances.”

(b)(1) “After a judgment imposing a punishment other than imprisonment in the state prison or imprisonment in a county jail under the provisions of subdivision (h) of Section 1170.” This is the automatic one. If the sentence itself was not a felony-level commitment, the crime is a misdemeanor by operation of the statute. Note carefully what is excluded: a county jail term served under Penal Code 1170(h) is still a felony sentence, and it does not trigger this.

(b)(2) A commitment to a secure youth treatment facility where the court designates the offense a misdemeanor. Older articles describe this in terms of the California Youth Authority. That language is out of date.

(b)(3) The probation route, quoted above. This is the one most readers want.

(b)(4) “When the prosecuting attorney files in a court having jurisdiction over misdemeanor offenses a complaint specifying that the offense is a misdemeanor.” The defendant can object at arraignment or plea, in which case it goes back to being charged as a felony.

(b)(5)(A) “When the court determines, prior to trial, either on its own motion or the motion of a party, that the offense is a misdemeanor.” (b)(5)(B) adds that after such a motion is denied, another one can only be brought “upon a showing of changed circumstances, which includes, but is not limited to, newly available facts relevant to the charge or defendant’s personal circumstances, or change in the applicable law.”

Two things the statute does not do, and this surprises people.

First, Penal Code 17 contains no list of factors. There is no “the court shall consider” sentence anywhere in it. Every list of considerations you will read online, the nature of the offense, your attitude toward it, your character, comes from court decisions rather than from the code. That is worth knowing because it means the judge has wide room, and because a lawyer arguing your motion is arguing from case law, not reading a checklist.

Second, the statute sets no deadline. The only timing word in (b)(3) is “thereafter.” There is no window, no cutoff, and no sentence about whether probation has to still be running. More on that below.

Two express limits do appear on the face of the section. Subdivision (e) says section 17 cannot be used to relieve someone of a duty to register as a sex offender under Penal Code 290. And subdivision (f), quoted at the top of this page, bars the court from denying a request because restitution is unpaid.

Section 17 was last amended by Stats. 2025, ch. 611 (A.B. 321), effective January 1, 2026.

When you can ask

If you were granted probation, you can ask at sentencing, and you can ask later.

Later includes after probation is over. In People v. Wood (1998) 62 Cal.App.4th 1262, the Court of Appeal said an application “may be made at any time, even after probation is terminated, provided that conditions for reduction are satisfied.” So a case from years ago is not automatically too old to ask about.

What it does not do

This is the section to actually read, because it is where the confident bad advice lives.

It is not a time machine. Courts have said repeatedly that a reduction works from the moment it is granted forward, and does not reach back. If a consequence already attached to you while the conviction was a felony, the reduction does not undo it. One recent case involved a pension forfeiture that had already been decided before the reduction; the reduction did not unwind it.

The practical version: the earlier you get this done, the more it is worth. A reduction is protection for the future, not a refund for the past.

Guns, carefully

Penal Code 29800(a)(1) makes it a felony for a person “convicted of a felony” to own or possess a firearm. The argument that a reduction helps is straightforward: if the crime is now a misdemeanor for all purposes, the person is no longer someone convicted of a felony. In Gebremicael v. California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (2004) 118 Cal.App.4th 1477, the court said a person whose felony is reduced to a misdemeanor is no longer classified as a felon unlawfully possessing a firearm.

But there is a second statute waiting, and this is where people get hurt. Penal Code 29805 bans firearm possession after certain misdemeanor convictions. Most of that section runs for ten years from the conviction. One subdivision does not: 29805(b) covers a misdemeanor violation of Penal Code 273.5, the domestic violence corporal injury section, convicted on or after January 1, 2019, and its text carries no ten year limit at all.

So if the felony you are reducing is a 273.5, the reduction may move you from one firearm ban into another one. That is not a reason to skip the reduction, which is valuable for other reasons. It is a reason to know what you are buying before you buy it.

We have a separate guide on this whole area: getting your gun rights back after a felony.

Strikes, and why the honest answer is “ask a lawyer”

You will find pages saying flatly that a 17(b) reduction removes a strike. You will find others saying flatly that it does not. Be suspicious of both.

What is reasonably settled: in People v. Park (2013) 56 Cal.4th 782, the California Supreme Court held that where a wobbler had been reduced under 17(b) and the person later committed new crimes, the old conviction no longer qualified as a prior serious felony and could not be used to increase the new sentence under Penal Code 667(a).

Notice the order of events, because it is the whole thing. The reduction came first, the new case came second. That is consistent with everything above about the relief working forward rather than backward.

What is not settled, at least not in anything this page can point you to, is how that interacts with the separate Three Strikes language in Penal Code 667(d)(1), which says the determination is made “upon the date of that prior conviction” and “is not affected by the sentence imposed unless the sentence automatically, upon the initial sentencing, converts the felony to a misdemeanor.”

So: if there is a strike in your history and it matters to you, this is not a do-it-yourself project. It is a real legal question with real disagreement in it, and the answer will turn on the specific offense and the specific procedural history of your case.

Reduction or expungement first?

If both are available, ask for the reduction first.

The reason is in what each one does. A reduction under 17(b) changes what the crime is. A dismissal under Penal Code 1203.4 does not change what the crime is; it closes the case and releases you from many of the penalties attached to it. As the court put it in Gebremicael, section 1203.4 “merely frees the convicted person from certain penalties and disabilities,” while section 17 “changes the fundamental character of the offense.”

Do them in that order and you end up with a dismissed misdemeanor. Do them backwards and you may end up with a dismissed felony, which is a weaker result for the same effort.

Our guide to the second step is here: how expungement works in California. There is also a free eligibility checker that saves nothing and sends nothing anywhere.

Read more: what if I was sentenced to county jail and never got probation?

This is a real and fairly common situation, and the 17(b) probation route does not fit it.

Since realignment, a lot of felony sentences are served in county jail rather than state prison, under Penal Code 1170(h). That is still a felony sentence. The person is serving felony time in a county facility. And Penal Code 17(b)(1), the automatic route, expressly excludes “imprisonment in a county jail under the provisions of subdivision (h) of Section 1170.”

So for a straight 1170(h) commitment with no grant of probation, a 17(b) reduction is generally not the tool.

The tool is Penal Code 1203.41, and it is worth knowing about because it reaches situations 1203.4 does not. Read directly, the section says that if a defendant is convicted of a felony, the court “in its discretion and in the interest of justice” may allow withdrawal of the plea, set aside the verdict, and dismiss, with release from penalties and disabilities except as provided in Vehicle Code 13555.

The waiting periods are in 1203.41(a)(2), and they are specific:

• One year after completing the sentence, if the sentence was imposed under Penal Code 1170(h)(5)(B).
• Two years after completing the sentence, if it was imposed under 1170(h)(5)(A), or if the defendant was sentenced to state prison.

Note that second one. 1203.41 reaches state prison cases, which 1203.4 does not. That is genuinely useful information and it is missing from most consumer pages.

Two gates in 1203.41(a)(3): you cannot be on parole or on 1170(h)(5)(B) supervision, and you cannot be serving a sentence for, on probation for, or charged with, an offense. And 1203.41(a)(6) carves out a felony that resulted in a state prison sentence and a sex offender registration requirement.

One limit to be clear about, because it parallels the firearms point above. Penal Code 1203.41(b)(3) says a dismissal under that section “does not permit a person to own, possess, or have in their custody or control a firearm.” A dismissal is not a gun rights restoration, under either statute.

What actually helps

The statute gives judges no checklist, so what moves them is what moves judges generally in this area.

• Time. A long stretch since the conviction with nothing new on it is the strongest single fact most people have.
• A clean probation. Completing without violations is worth a great deal. More than one violation along the way is the thing most likely to hurt.
• A concrete reason. A job you cannot take, a license you cannot get, a housing application. Judges respond to a specific closed door far better than to a general wish to move on.
• Proof, not description. The letter from the licensing board. The job posting with the requirement on it. Paper beats a story every time.
• What you have done since. Work history, school, treatment, service. Bring records of it.

Expect the district attorney to have a view, and expect that view to be strongest where there was a victim, where there were repeated acts, or where the conduct was violent. That is not a reason to skip asking. It is a reason to be ready for it.

Two practical things vary by courthouse and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Whether your motion gets decided on the papers or requires you to stand up in court is a local question, and so is whether the district attorney’s office in that county tends to oppose these or tends to submit. Ask a lawyer who actually appears in that building. It is the single most useful question you can ask them, and it costs one phone call.

The same goes for whether to file the reduction and the dismissal as one motion or two. Doing the reduction first is the right order for the reasons above. Whether your county wants them in the same filing is a matter of local practice, not law.

Where to read next

• How expungement works in California, which is the natural next step after a reduction.
• Sealing an arrest that never led to a conviction, if that is your situation instead.
• Gun rights after a felony, for the firearms side in full.

This is general information, not legal advice. Talk to a California attorney about your situation.