Van Nuys, Shoplifting at Sephora, Judicial Diversion

Our client, age 49, was shopping at Sephora with her three-year old granddaughter.  As the client were browsing the items, the curios granddaughter was grabbing items and looking at them, after which time she would place the items in our client’s purse.

Our client, despite trying to shop for herself, noticed this and told the granddaughter to stop.  Our client would then continue trying to find the items she wanted and the granddaughter continued to put items in our client’s purse.

Finally, our client went to check out from the store and paid for quite a few items.  She also looked into her own purse and found a few items that her granddaughter had slipped into her purse.  Our client removed those and paid for those items.

Our client then left the store and walked about ten steps toward her car.  However, before she could get much further, loss prevention officers from Sephora stopped our client and brought her back into the store and then into a back office.

In the back office, loss prevention looked into our client’s purse and found $841 in 22 unpaid items.  Our client explained that she had actually bought most of the items, but the other ones may have been dropped into her purse by her granddaughter.

Loss prevention did not seem to care about the granddaughter’s conduct and called the Los Angeles Police Department, who came to the scene.  The client was otherwise cooperative.  Loss prevention explained the situation and the L.A.P.D. officer cited out our client once our client signed a promise to appear in the Van Nuys Courthouse in about two months.

On the day of the arraignment, Greg was at the courthouse for another case and the Client, with her boyfriend, approached Greg.  The Client explained the situation and said she was from Chicago, but was in Los Angeles for her mom’s surgery and hospitalization.  She explained that she had no prior criminal history and was very nervous about going to jail.

Greg explained that such a case was eligible for judicial diversion and then explained what judicial diversion was.  Greg described what the most likely terms of judicial diversion would be and how long it would be.

The client’s boyfriend indicated they wanted to hire Greg, so Greg wrote out, by hand, a retainer agreement with all the required terms.  The client then signed the retainer, as did Greg, before going into the courtroom.

After waiting in the courtroom for about an hour for a judge to take the bench and a Los Angeles City Attorney to come to the courtroom, our client advised Greg that she had to leave to get to the hospital for her mom.  Greg explained that he would stay in court and appear on her behalf under Penal Code § 977(a).  Greg explained that he would then pdf the police report, the client’s criminal history and the complaint and then email it to her, along with an explanation of how plea bargain negotiations went.

The client then left and, a little while later, the Los Angeles City Attorney assigned to the courtroom arrived and Greg and he discussed judicial diversion.

Due to the high dollar value of the items and the number of items, the Los Angeles City Attorney offered a plea bargain wherein our client would plead no contest to petty theft (Penal Code § 484) and be placed on one year of summary probation with an obligation to perform 50 hours of community service and take a shoplifting prevention course.  She also had to stay out of all Sephora stores for a year.

Greg thought the judge would offer judicial diversion since our client was eligible for this.  Greg therefore asked the judge to place our client on judicial diversion and the judge agreed.  The judge, a female, seemed to understand that Sephora is quite expensive and that the dollar value of the items taken could be misleading.

The judge placed our client on judicial diversion for a period of six months with an obligation that she perform 40 hours of community service and take an online theft prevention class.

The client was happy that Greg knew how to navigate judicial diversion and that she had hired Greg Hill & Associates.  Her case would be dismissed after six months and then she could have the police report and the court file sealed under Penal Code §§ 851.91 and 851.92.