The following excerpt is repeated from Notes 99-8-1.

In County of Los Angeles v. Civil Service Commission, (1995) 39 Cal. App. 4^th 620, 46 Cal. Rptr. 256, the California Court of Appeal held that evidence of a nolo contendere or no contest plea is inadmissible as evidence in a subsequent administrative proceeding. The court upheld a hearing officer who would not admit evidence of a deputy sheriff’s nolo plea for receiving stolen property when the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department wanted to fire the deputy sheriff for receiving stolen property.

The court stated that "… when the conviction is based on a nolo contendere plea, its reliability as an indicator of guilt is substantially reduced, both because of the defendant’s reservations about admitting guilt for all purposes and because the willingness of the district attorney to agree to and the court to approve the plea tends to indicate weakness in the available proof of guilt."

In County of Los Angeles, the deputy sheriff pled nolo contendere to a misdemeanor.

California Evidence Code §1300 states:

Evidence of a final judgment adjudging a person guilty of a crime punishable as a felony is not made inadmissible by the hearsay rule when offered in a civil action to prove any fact essential to the judgment whether or not the judgment was based on a plea of nolo contendere.

California Penal Code §1016 refers to six types of pleas a defendant may make. One such plea is nolo contendere. In pertinent part, Penal Code §1016 says the following:

Nolo Contendere, subject to the approval of the court. The court shall ascertain whether the defendant completely understands that a plea of nolo contendere shall be considered the same as a plea of guilty and that, upon a plea of nolo contendere, the court shall find the defendant guilty. The legal effect of such a plea, to a crime punishable as a felony, shall be the same as that of a plea of guilty for all purposes. In cases other than those punishable as felonies, the plea and any admissions required by the court during any inquiry it makes as to the voluntariness of, and factual basis for, the plea may not be used against the defendant as an admission in any civil suit based upon or growing out of the act upon which the criminal prosecution was based.

Thus, if the county presents evidence of a claimant’s nolo contendere plea to a misdemeanor, it will not be considered as an admission to any facts in the state hearing. (Under the relaxed rules of evidence practiced in state hearings, an ALJ may admit the nolo contendere plea to a misdemeanor into evidence, but that does not mean it should be given any weight). If the county presents evidence that the claimant pled nolo contendere to a felony, it would not have collateral estoppel effect in the subsequent state hearing as stated in Notes 99-8-1. The nolo contendere plea to a felony could be introduced into evidence as an admission as to the specific facts to which the claimant pled nolo contendere, just as with a guilty plea.