I’ve been a solo general practice lawyer in the Sacramento area for 45 years. I’m old now. I made my meager living helping people deal with abuse of power of all kinds. This is the one about the time the cops framed my client. I love to tell this, but I’ll try to keep to the point.
It was the late 70s. My client, call him Dave, was a young guy who lived on the fringes of the drug culture. He sold some pot but it was just to support his own use. Nothing major. He did grow three or four MJ plants at his apartment. He had a good job. Once, about a year earlier, he did act as a middle man in a drug transaction that went bad; everybody got cold feet so it didn’t happen. Bill still had the drugs, about 200 pills, stuck away in a desk drawer.
One evening, Dave ran into a nice couple, Bill and Joyce, at a local bar and they seemed to have a lot in common. Dave and Joyce were immediately attracted to each other and, fortunately, it turned out that Bill was “just a friend.” So a budding romance between Dave and Joyce grew more intimate over the next few weeks. The three of them spent a lot of time at Dave’s place over the next couple of months.
Dave did have one small problem with Bill, however. Bill frequently would turn the conversation to drugs, trying to get Dave to get some drugs for him. Bill particularly wanted cocaine. Dave told him several times that he could get him pot but he didn’t know where to get cocaine. But Bill kept persisting, saying he was sure Dave could find him some cocaine or meth (“crank.”) So one evening, Dave told Bill about the pills that he had. Bill was eager to buy them. They settled on $200. So the next evening. Bill came over with $200 and Dave got the pills out of his desk drawer. Suddenly cops appeared – from the front door, the back door and, Dave thought, out of the woodwork. Dave was arrested. The pills were confiscated. His plants were confiscated. Dave went to jail. He called around for help with bail. He called Joyce. She didn’t answer. He never saw Joyce again. He did see Bill one more time.
After Dave bailed out, he came to see me. I figured it out pretty fast: Bill was an undercover police plant, Joyce was Bill’s accomplice, and this was a clear case of police entrapment – if we could prove it.
The next interesting thing was the lab test on the pills - ASPIRIN! But that didn’t deter the DA, who promptly charged Dave with the felony of selling a substance “in lieu of” prohibited drugs. He was also charged with felony cultivation of MJ for sale.
The police report was a thing of beauty. The lead narcotics detective told about how “Bill,” who he had never met before had come to the police to tell them that Dave, “a friend of his,” had offered to sell him drugs and that he wanted to be a “good citizen” and report it to the police. The detective told about how Bill agreed to go through with the deal so they could make the arrest.
I immediately went to the DA to complain that this was a complete setup by the detective from the beginning. The DA said he would check it out. Later the DA called me and told me that the detective absolutely denied that he had ever met Bill before, and unequivocally stated that he didn’t know anything about any woman in connection with this case. He also told me that Bill completely corroborated the detective’s story – never met him before. The DA ridiculed me for “falling” for such a story from my client. Same old stuff. He wouldn’t disclose Bill’s whereabouts. Said I could cross-examine him at the preliminary hearing.
That’s when we got enough money together to hire Stoney. Stoney was an old private detective, a retired police sergeant, a really savvy guy it turned out. He set out to find Bill.
About a week later, Stoney appeared at my office with a young woman. The first thing he said was that he had found Bill. In fact, Bill was in “protective custody” at a small jail in another county. I said “Damn! I guess we won’t be able to talk to him.” Stoney said, “On no, I did talk to him. In fact he gave me a complete statement. This lady here is a stenographer and she took it all down.” Whereupon, the woman handed me a bound notarized transcript of their interview with Bill. Stoney had found out, through mysterious sources, where Bill was, went to the jail, identified himself as “an investigator from Marysville” (which he technically was) and they let him right into Bill’s cell with a stenographer! Some security, huh?
The transcript was a window into the heart of darkness. Bill apparently thought Stoney was a cop come to reward him for setting up Dave. He apparently wanted everybody to know what a good job he had done. He spared no details. He told about how he was in jail for burglary, drugs, and perjury when the detective approached him with a deal to lighten his sentence. All he had to do was go out and set up Dave. He was instructed in detail as to how he was to approach Dave. He reported his progress regularly to the detective. The detective introduced him to Joyce and told him how use her to get into Dave’s confidence. Bill said he was always afraid Joyce was a cop and actually asked Stoney if she was. Finally, Stoney identified himself as a private investigator working for the defense attorney. Bill was stunned. He asked for an attorney. Stoney advised him that he was going to be confronted in court with the statements he had just made. Bill said “What do I care? I’m in here for perjury anyway!”
Forward to the preliminary hearing. Bill testified under oath to the detective’s version of the story. My turn. I asked Bill if he had ever met the couple sitting in the second row of the courtroom. He looked out and saw Stoney and the stenographer. At that point, I handed a copy of the transcript to that smarmy lying bastard of a DA. He read a couple of sentences and asked for a recess. When we came back, he abruptly dismissed the charges regarding the pill sales.
However, he doggedly said he was going to go forward with the MJ cultivation charge. We had previously gotten the judge to rule that the plants in the back room were inadmissible fruits of an illegal search, so the DA was moving forward with the potted plants in plain sight in the kitchen window. He tried to admit the plants into evidence, but it appeared that they had put all of the plants in one bag, and couldn’t distinguish the admissible plants from the suppressed evidence. Whole case dismissed.
The detective was never disciplined. The DA suffered no consequences. My point here is that this sort of thing cannot go on without support from all levels of the police and prosecution. The ease with which everybody lied to me proves that.
I have lots of stories like this. A lot of them are more recent. It still goes on. Anybody want to hear the one about the audio recording the cops said didn’t exist? That’s a story for another day!