David Xu completed his two-year probation term in March and is asking a judge to dismiss his felony conviction, the New York Post reported.
How California’s dismissal process works
California Penal Code § 1203.4 allows qualifying defendants, after probation, to seek withdrawal of a guilty or no-contest plea and dismissal of the case. The statute sets out eligibility requirements and exceptions, and dismissal does not remove every legal consequence of a conviction. The law’s text is available through FindLaw.
The conviction
Xu, a metallurgist at Berkeley Engineering and Research, pleaded no contest in late 2023 to one felony count of poisoning after a plea agreement dropped the attempted-murder charges, the New York Post reported. He received two years of probation, with one day of jail time credited toward the sentence.
The case involved allegations that Xu put cadmium in coworker Rong Yuan’s food and water over about 18 months, from 2017 to 2019, according to the New York Post. The underlying crime account remains dependent on that outlet’s reporting.
