Exoneration of the Day!
Criminal defendants often feel as though police officers are out to get them… and sometimes they’re right.
Two middle-aged California men found themselves on the wrong side of a criminal courtroom under similar circumstances. The first man was a building contractor who went to a woman’s home to provide a price estimate for remodeling. As he was leaving, the woman asked where he was headed to next and he responded that he was headed to a particular restaurant to eat. A half hour after he arrived at the restaurant, the woman showed up and asked if she could join him. As the evening progressed, she became increasingly flirtatious, kissing him and crawling onto his lap—undoubtedly welcomed attention for a man in the middle of a nasty divorce. She pressured him to take shots with her throughout the night and eventually invited him back to her place for some hot-tubbing. As he was following her home, he was pulled over and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.
He entered a guilty plea before going to trial. The second man, recently removed from a nasty divorce himself, met a woman through a dating site who suggested that they meet at a local restaurant for some drinks. She encouraged him to drink and became increasingly flirtatious as the night went on, before inviting him over for some hot-tubbing. He, too, was pulled over, arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol, and was convicted shortly thereafter. His ex-wife’s attorney subsequently filed a motion to reduce his parenting time, which also leads to an increase in child support obligations.
As it turned out, a former police officer had been hired by their respective ex-wives to set them up for the arrests. The former police officer hired women to get the men drunk before luring them onto the road, where police officers were waiting to make the arrests. The district attorney’s office turned over this information to their criminal defense attorneys, which ultimately led to both men being exonerated.
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4051