Articles Posted in Theft

Under Arizona law, a court is prohibited from reopening questions decided in the same case by the same court. Similarly, once a court issues a final judgment in a case, the same parties cannot re-litigate the issue in future proceedings. Essentially, this means that if a court finds you not guilty of a specific crime, the State cannot try you for the same offense down the road. The court’s ruling is final, and this law prohibits defendants from getting prosecuted multiple times for the same offense.

In a recent case, however, the court decided that the prosecution was entitled to reuse evidence from a 2012 case in its 2018 case. The case was centered on a defendant’s personal laptop, which contained photos of nude children. In 2012, when the defendant was first charged with sexual exploitation of a minor, he filed a motion to suppress the incriminating evidence, which the trial court granted. Because there was no incriminating evidence against the defendant, then, the court dismissed the charges.

Six years later, the State re-charged the defendant with the same crime, sexual exploitation of a minor. The defendant again filed a motion to suppress, but this time, the court denied the motion. The case went to trial, and a jury found the defendant guilty as charged. On appeal, the defendant took issue with the fact that the court allowed the prosecution to re-charge him using the same evidence, six years later.

In a recent case before an Arizona court of appeals, the defendant asked the court to reconsider his guilty verdict in a burglary case. The defendant was originally convicted after a jury unanimously decided he had broken into a friend’s apartment with the intent to steal. According to the defendant, the prosecution had not sufficiently proven that he did not have permission to be inside the apartment. Disagreeing with the defendant, the court denied his appeal.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, the defendant asked a friend of his if he could temporarily stay in her garage. The friend agreed, and the defendant spent a few nights sleeping in the apartment garage. One night, however, he started yelling in the middle of the night. The friend told him he had to leave the next day.

In a recent case before an Arizona court of appeals, the defendant appealed her convictions for theft and fraudulent schemes. The defendant took issue with the trial court’s conduct during her trial, after which a jury found her guilty of mismanaging several trusts and taking trust owners’ money for herself. After looking closely at the trial record, the court of appeals disagreed with the defendant and kept her convictions and sentences in place.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, the defendant managed the assets of several trusts. Over time, it became clear that in each trust, the amount of money available to the trust owners was dwindling significantly. Upon investigating, the State discovered that the defendant was taking money out of each trust and using it to pay her credit card bills and fund her personal accounts. She also seemed to be fabricating her records of the time she spent managing the trust, recording unreasonably long hours and explaining that the significant payments were because of the high volume of hours she was working.

The State charged the defendant for mismanaging the trusts, and her case went to trial. At trial, the defendant chose to represent herself, despite being offered an attorney. She made several arguments in an attempt to get the case dismissed, but the trial went forward.

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In a recent Arizona car theft case, the defendant unsuccessfully appealed his conviction and sentence for theft of a means of transportation. The trial court sentenced the defendant to an enhanced, aggravated prison term of fourteen years. On appeal, the defendant challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction. The appeals court denied his appeal and affirmed his conviction and his sentence.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, one evening in February 2021, a man forced his way into the back door of a home while the resident was not there. The person took a car key fob and several personal items from the home, departing in the resident’s car. Using the car’s global positioning system, the resident was able to track her car to a precise location in Maricopa, where police officers found it early the next morning. The defendant was in the driver’s seat, and another individual was in the passenger’s seat. The defendant was indicted for theft of a means of transportation and then convicted as charged, and sentenced to an enhanced, aggravated prison term of fourteen years following a jury trial. The defendant filed an appeal shortly thereafter.

On appeal, the defendant contended that the state presented insufficient evidence to support his conviction for theft of a means of transportation. The appellate court reviewed de novo the sufficiency of the evidence. In doing so, the appeals court viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the jury’s verdict and resolving all inferences against the defendant. The appellate court opinion outlined the evidence presented against the defendant, establishing that the car was stolen and the defendant was found sitting in the driver’s seat of the car several hours later without permission to be in the car.

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In a recent opinion in an Arizona case involving stolen jewelry, the defendant’s request for a new verdict was denied. After having been found guilty of selling stolen property, the defendant appealed by arguing there was insufficient evidence to support her guilty verdict. She also argued that it was actually her co-defendant who should be punished and that she should not be forced to pay the amount of the jewelry. The court disagreed, saying both that the evidence was sufficient to support a guilty verdict and it that was right for the defendant to be the one made to pay the money.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, two defendants were involved in a trafficking charge that revolved around stolen jewelry and an attempt to sell that jewelry to a coin and gold shop. One of the defendants had taken the pieces from an individual’s home, then had given them to the second defendant to sell. When the defendant went into the shop and began showing the pieces to the store owner, it became quickly apparent that the defendant did not know any information about where the pieces had come from or how much money they were worth.

Suspicious, the store owner called detectives after the encounter. When detectives contacted the defendant, she claimed she found the jewelry discarded on the side of the road. The defendant could not, however, provide any details about how or where she found the pieces. At trial, the State charged the defendant with one count of second-degree trafficking in stolen property. She was ordered to pay the store owner as well as the original owner of the jewelry for the cost of the pieces – in total, $13,810.

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