How To Set Someone Up For A Crime

Our entire justice system depends on folks telling the truth, but the truth can be hard to find–peculiarly when there's no evidence to back up the accusations.

How can we tell when someone is beingness truthful?

Without getting too Dr. Phil here, I must point out that certain characters breed a bid more suspicion than others. For some people, walking alone at night with someone a few steps behind you will immediately raise suspicions. For others, they will never trust a discussion out of a politician'south mouth. I get that. Some don't trust car salesmen. Again, I get that.

Merely, there are folks out there that are professional liars. They lie for a living. Their friendships our a prevarication. Their relationships are a prevarication. And, they get compensated for their deceit. Our criminal justice system breeds these high-level liars.

The moment of conception looks something like this: someone gets arrested on a serious drug offense and faces decades in prison.

Then, a ray of hope. There is a way out of this prison time.

Yes, you may never run into your kid graduate from middle school. You may never see your daughter go to the prom. Or get married, or take your grandchild. Nope, you'll exist in prison for the rest of your life. Or, "if y'all prepare some people up, we'll drib your prison house time."

Welcome to the wonderful world of confidential informants (CI).

After 26 years of defending criminal cases, I can tell you that the urge to avoid prison will drive folks to do bad things–worse things than what they're accused of–all sanctioned past the State. Oh, the irony.

The goal of a confidential informant is to reduce their prison sentence by sending others to prison house. Yes, it comes down to either the informant spending the rest of their life in prison–or someone else going to prison forever. Who are they going to cull?

Unfortunately, it is pretty easy for CI'due south to set up innocent citizens (the technical term for this is entrapment). All a CI needs are two phones, some drugs, and a public meeting place. Nosotros've established motive.

Outset, the CI calls "the stooge" and sets upward a coming together for something far less severe. I've had clients arrested for very serious trafficking charges–who thought they were meeting up to buy a misdemeanor amount of weed (for case).

Side by side, the CI picks a public place to meet. The key to the CI getting his Get Out Of Jail Free carte du jour is the post-obit simple task: the CI heads over to the coming together place a few hours before the official deal and stashes drugs somewhere at the public location.

Like shooting fish in a barrel peasy.

Yes, the government searches their CI prior to the coming together, which is why the CI will head over there before the official deal time to constitute evidence.

While the police monitor the drug deal from the outside, the CI enters the public place and meets with the stooge, grabs the drugs he stashed hours agone and returns to his police handler with the handful of drugs he stashed earlier in the mean solar day, claiming that he bought the drugs from the stooge.

And in that location you accept it, i Get Out Of Jail Costless menu.

To see this simple grift in real life, permit's have a look at the contempo case of Turner five. State , 279 So. 3d 340 (Fla. fifth DCA 2022). Turner was convicted of selling methamphetamine, possessing methamphetamine with the intent to sell, and unlawfully using a 2-way communication device.

Turner was told to run across a confidential informant at a Lowe'southward Home Improvement store, in an exterior shed. The CI wore a hidden camera, simply it didn't record Turner handing the drugs to the CI.

Side Note On Hidden Cameras: Ix times out of ten, these "hidden cameras" are just hole-and-corner smartphone programs that the government installs on a CI'southward phone before the CI does the deal. These hidden programs record both the front camera and rear camera at all times, and tin can only exist detected/enabled/disabled via a USB connection to law enforcement's laptop afterwards the deal is washed. So, the CI will never get "defenseless" with this program, even if someone examines the phone.

Anyhow, Turner takes his case to trial, challenge that the CI actually pulled the drugs from a shelf within the shed and that the CI probably planted these drugs earlier in the twenty-four hours.

At present, information technology is pretty tough to wiggle your manner out of this CI scam. Later all, the constabulary "trust" their CI. Later all, the police searched their CI before inbound the shed, and the CI didn't have whatsoever drugs going in. After all, the CI then meets with Turner and comes out of the shed with drugs.

Only.

Only, there is an old engineering science that works well in these situations. It's called fingerprints. If Turner actually touched that handbag of meth, his prints would be on the baggie.

At trial, Turner's defense attorney argued in endmost that reasonable doubt existed due to the lack of fingerprint evidence. Their argument was, at first, sloppy, just once cleaned up, the defense chaser argued that "had the Florida Department of Law Enforcement processed the baggie containing the methamphetamine for fingerprints, [Turner's] fingerprints would not have been on the baggie". The prosecutor objected, and the judge agreed with the prosecutor, prohibiting Turner's defense force attorney from making that particular reasonable uncertainty statement.

On appeal, Turner argued that the judge should have immune the fingerprint argument.

The appeals courtroom agreed, and overturned Turner'south confidence, finding that his defense attorney was "entitled to argue that the State's lack of fingerprint evidence constituted reasonable uncertainty. The trial court erred in denying Turner the opportunity to nowadays that statement."

This prosecutor's objection got Turner's entire conviction thrown out. As the maxim goes: simply because you Tin object doesn't mean you SHOULD.

The long-standing rule, which every approximate reads to every unmarried criminal jury in Florida, is that "reasonable incertitude equally to the guilt of the accused may arise from the bear witness, a conflict in the show, or a lack of evidence." id. at 2, and Fla. Std. Jury Instr. (Crim.) 3.7.

If you remember it is unfair to give the prosecutor and judge a difficult time over this, go along in mind that these folks take a juris doctorate caste–they should know the law. Long before Turner, the law in Florida was well settled on the validity of fingerprint arguments (and similar doubts arising from the lack of show).

Over xx years ago, in the case of Starr v. State, a conviction was overturned afterwards the judge granted the state's objection to a lack of fingerprint argument, ruling that a "reasonable doubt is oftentimes created by the lack of evidence of guilt and, thus, comment on the absence of bear witness on an event pointing to guilt is fair and proper annotate." 518 So. second 1389 (Fla. 4th DCA 1988).

So, back to the question at mitt: how exercise you frame someone for a crime?

Let'southward review today'southward facts.

Turner's case involved a confidential informant. A paid CI.

Turner's instance involved a drug deal in a public place, a shed.

Turner was never seen with the drugs, even on video. Every bit the appellate court noted in Footnote #1, "our review of the video does non support the State's contention that the video 'showed Turner in possession of the methamphetamine' ".

That, my friends, is how information technology is washed.

[CI'southward aren't the only folks out there planting evidence, for some entertaining video footage, Google the police bodycam footage of officers planting evidence, like one-time Florida deputy Zach Wester, where he fabricated 120 felony drug cases by planting evidence]

Source: https://www.jgcrimlaw.com/how-to-frame-someone-for-a-drug-offense.html

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