Legal Question in Criminal Law in California
Was This Entrapment?
This is about an old case so it may be moot. In 1989 I plead no contest to a misdemeanor embezzlement charge. I was represented by a court-appointed attorney who never talked to me until the day I went into court. He advised me to take the plea.
The strongest evidence against me was a statement that I made to a former co-worker after I left the company. They had discovered missing funds after I left. She called me and told me that the company owner said if I would admit to everything and agree to pay the money back he wouldn't go to the police. I wrote a letter to him admitting what I had done.
Later on I found out that the owner had gone to the police before they contacted me, and that the police told him that they should try to get me to admit what I had done. They chose this one co-worker to whom I had been close in order to convince me to make an admission. Without this admission there was only questionable evidence against me and I might not have been even charged.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: Was This Entrapment?
The case is long dead EXCEPT that you could have an attorney file a motion to expunge the record, meaning conviction is set aside and the case is dismissed. Contact me if interested in doing so.
Re: Was This Entrapment?
No, it was not entrapment and yes, the case is too old to do much about.
Entrapment means being pressured by law enforcement into *committing* a crime which you otherwise would not have committed, not just being tricked into confessing. The idea of entrapment is that many honest people can only resist so much temptation before they give in and commit a crime, and that it is unjust for the government to pressure people until they cross that line and commit a crime if they never would have crossed it on their own.
That's a very inexact description, but I think it sums up the doctrine reasonably well.
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