Los Angeles; California, has a diverse array of people working in a range of professional occupations. Preparing for many of those occupations involves receiving and maintaining professional licenses. The process of securing those licenses can be involved, and includes communications about the criminal history, or lack thereof, of applicants for licenses.
A part of the process for applicants is Live Scan, an electronic fingerprinting process that is widely used in California. It results in fingerprints being reviewed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the California Department of Justice (DOJ). That allows for criminal history to be checked at both federal and state level.
Applicants are also required to disclose all prior criminal convictions. Failing to do so can result in a denial of the license sought. Cases where you faced legal charged and pled nolo contendere or guilty must also be disclosed, even if they were expunged in accordance with Section 1203.4 of the Penal Code.
You must disclose all infractions, citations, misdemeanors and felonies. However, convictions that were adjudicated in juvenile court do not have to be reported and neither do convictions that are both two or more years old and fall under under sections 11357(b), (c), (d), (e), and 11360(b) of the California Health and Safety Code. You should carefully review those exceptions with your attorney to make sure that they apply in your case to avoid inadvertently failing to disclose anything that you should disclose.
Failure to report anything that you are legally required to, in addition to very probably resulting in denial of licensure, will also be viewed as a breach of professional conduct. The FBI and DOJ will inform the California Medical Board of all future criminal activity once you are in the system, so once you get your license, it is best to avoid jeopardizing it by breaking any laws, major or minor.
Source: The Medical Board of California, “Physicians and Surgeons,” accessed Aug. 23, 2017