Appellant entered a guilty plea to grand theft for the fraudulent use of credit cards to purchase airline tickets. He was sentenced to probation with a year in the county jail as a condition of probation. His surrender date was stayed for two months. While the case was pending, appellant was also the subject of a federal investigation for similar offenses. During the month after sentencing on the state case, he assisted an undercover federal agent in purchasing fraudulent airline tickets. On the date which appellant was supposed to surrender to begin serving his county jail time, he was in federal custody. His probation was violated, and he was sentenced to state prison to run consecutively to his federal sentence. On appeal, appellant argued that he should have been allowed to withdraw his guilty plea because he was entrapped by government authorities, and the “sentence entrapment” resulted in his probation violation. Specifically, he claimed that he was not advised by the prosecutor that federal agents planned to “set him up” for the subsequent probation violation and then ask for more time in prison. The appellate court here held that the record did not support appellants argument. The prosecutor played no role in the delay appellant requested before he began serving his state time. Nor was the prosecutor aware that appellant would seize the opportunity to commit another offense and violate his probation. Appellant in this case was not pressured into committing a crime. Even assuming that sentence entrapment is cognizable in California state courts, it was not present here.
Case Summaries