Different Types of Pleas in California
Shortly after you’ve been formally arrested and charged with a crime, you’ll have an arraignment. The arraignment is your first opportunity to tell a judge how you plead.
At a California arraignment, there are three different ways you can plea:
- Guilty
- Not guilty
- No-contest
Guilty
A plea of guilty should be self-explanatory. When you tell the judge that you’re guilty, you admit that you committed the crimes for which you’ve been charged and that you’re ready to face the consequences. While everyone has their own reasons for pleading guilty at the arraignment, one of the main reasons they do so is because they’re hoping that by admitting to their guilt right away, they will get a smaller sentence than if the case went to trial.
Not Guilty
When you plead not guilty, you’re telling the judge that you’re taking no credit for the crimes you’ve been charged with. When you plead not guilty at the arraignment, the case progresses to the next stage and often ends with a jury trial. Many people plead not guilty because they want an opportunity to negotiate with the prosecution and potentially reach a plea agreement that would result in a lesser charge or less severe sentence.
No-Contest
No-contest pleas are a bit confusing. When you plead no contest, you’re telling the judge that you are willing to accept the consequences of the criminal charge. In California, a no-contest plea is handled the same way as a guilty plea. When you plea no-contest, your case will go directly from the arraignment phase to the sentencing phase.
The main reason people decide to plea no-contest in California is that they are worried about civil lawsuits. While it’s true that the California criminal court views a no-contest plea as a guilty plea, the same isn’t true in civil courts. When you plea no-contest, the plaintiff in a civil case can’t say that you ever openly admitted your guilt.
The way you plea at an arraignment has a long-lasting impact on your life, especially if you’re facing felony charges. Considering how serious the situation is, you should never enter any plea without first consulting with a defense attorney.
Vaping Laws in California
These days you are almost more likely to see someone vaping than to spot a traditional cigarette smoker. Many of the younger generation have turned to vapes and e-cigs as opposed to traditional cigarettes. There are a few concrete reasons why vaping continues to become a more popular alternative.
- There is less odor connected to vapes
- More flavor choices
- It’s more economical
- Some think it’s safer
- Vaping is considered to be more socially acceptable
- Since there is less mess, vaping is more convenient
- Vaping is more customizable
While there are some key differences between vaping and smoking, California lawmakers treat the two habits the same. The same rules that regulate smoking also regulate vaping.
The Minimum Age for Vaping
No one who has not yet passed their 21st birthday is allowed to smoke or vape in California. The state has a zero-tolerance policy. If you’re caught vaping and you are under 21, you will face legal consequences. Stores are not allowed to sell vapes or vaping products to anyone who can’t show documented proof that they’re at least 21. If you’re caught supplying vapes or vaping products to a minor, you’ll face legal charges.
Retailers aren’t the only ones who will get into trouble if they’re caught selling vaping supplies to a minor in California. Friends, relatives, and even parents aren’t allowed to supply a minor with any vaping products. Doing so is considered to be contributing to the delinquency of a minor. If you’re convicted you could be issued a fine or even sentenced to jail.
You’re Limited to the Locations Where You Can Vape
When e-cig first hit the market, one of the most appealing things about them was that they allowed users with a way to smoke in buildings and other places where smoking was prohibited. That’s no longer the case. You’re not allowed to vape while in a public building, government building, hotel lobby, or on school grounds. Getting caught vaping in a place where the act is prohibited will result in a large fine.
Different California Cities Have Different Rules
If you’re into vaping, you need to pay attention to what city you’re in. Some cities, like Los Angeles and Beverly Hills have far stricter laws than the state. For example, if you’re in one of LA’s unincorporated areas, vaping (and smoking) is strictly prohibited. Beverly Hills completely prohibited smoking and vaping in 2021. The only exception is the three smoking lounges that continue to operate in the city.
Consequences of Shoplifting in California
A surprising number of people have shoplifted during their lifetime. It’s especially common with young children who will often take something from candy racks. Teenagers will also sometimes shoplift because they were dared by their friends or because they are simply looking for a way to rebel.
The problem with shoplifting is that it is against the law. If you’re caught, you face some serious legal consequences.
Shoplifting occurs when you remove something from a store without paying for it. There are times when this happens by accident, such as a pair of earrings getting overlooked by a cashier or a small item getting forgotten in a cart because you were distracted by a grumpy toddler, but most of the time, shoplifting is done deliberately.
In most accidental cases, the store management will review any security tapes they have or talk to the cashier who waited on you. If it’s clear that the item was accidentally taken from the shop, they’ll likely ask you to pay for it and let you go.
However, if they discover that the shoplifting was intentional, they’ll likely file criminal charges.
If you’re arrested as a result of your shoplifting, you’ll be charged with theft. The value of the merchandise you removed from the store determines if you’re charged with petty theft or grand theft. If the total value of merchandise taken during a single shoplifting episode is less than $950 you’ll be charged with petty theft which is a misdemeanor. If you took more than $950 worth of stuff, you’re facing felony grand theft charges.
With both petty and grand theft, you could face possible jail time, though the amount of time you spend incarcerated and the location varies. With a petty theft conviction, the maximum sentence is 6 months in a county jail. The maximum jail time associated with a grand theft conviction is a year.
It isn’t unusual for a judge to look at the circumstances surrounding the shoplifting incident and decide that community service, a fine, restitution, and probation are sufficient sentences.
One of the big things the judge will look at while they are trying to settle on an appropriate sentence is your criminal history. They will be far more willing to entertain a mild sentence that includes nothing more than a small fine and community service if this is your first brush with the law. If you already have a criminal record, especially that record includes other theft charges, they may decide to hit you with the maximum sentence.
How to Report a Crime
You’ve seen a crime happen. Now you’re in a bind. Are you legally required to report the crime? Who should you report the crime to? How do you even go about reporting a crime? How long do you have to report the crime? It’s amazing how much stress simply being an innocent bystander can cause.
Are You Legally Required to Report a Crime?
The answer to whether you’re legally required to report a crime is both yes and no.
In most cases, the State of California is happy to let you decide whether you should report the crime. Failure to do so probably won’t get you into legal trouble but there are some exceptions.
The exceptions include:
- Rape
- Child Abuse
- Murder
In the case of severe crimes that the state feels you’re legally required to report, failure to do so will result in you being charged with aiding and abetting.
Who Do You Report a Crime To?
When you know about a crime and want to report it, you need to contact your local police station. You can do this in person or via a phone call. People at the police station will provide you with additional information that includes the exact officer you should speak to, what type of details they need to know, and if they’ll have follow-up questions.
In the case of extremely serious crimes, crimes that require immediate medical attention, or crimes that are in progress, you should call 911.
How to Report a Crime
The best way to report a crime is by staying calm, cool, and collected. While reporting the crime stick to just the details, and resist the urge to start sharing your opinions and thoughts about the situation. At this stage, plain facts are the only thing the police require.
Pay attention to the questions the person you’re speaking asks and answer them honestly. If you don’t know the answer, make that clear.
How Long Should You Wait to Report a Crime
The general rule of thumb is that you should report a crime as quickly as possible. Not only does this alert the authorities and allow them to take immediate and appropriate action, but it also allows you to share the details of the case while your memory is still sharp. Waiting even a few hours can drastically impact your ability to recall exactly what you saw and experienced.
Have you ever been in a position where you had to report a crime? How did you handle the situation?
What is Catfishing?
What we currently refer to as catfishing, which is pretending to be someone else for the specific purpose of deceiving another, isn’t a new concept. It has been happening since the beginning of time. The difference between now and all the historic cases of catfishing is that social media has made deceit and connecting with people easier than ever.
Using the term catfish to describe the act of assuming a fake identity in order to dupe another became commonplace shortly after a 2010 documentary called Catfish premiered. The documentary gave a detailed and fascinating account of a woman who was completely deceived by a young man with a Facebook account.
Catfishing could be considered a bit of a long con. The perpetrator puts a great deal of time and effort into setting up the scam. They must create a fake account, post fake photos, and come up with a good story. Most importantly they must know why they’re embarking on their catfishing escapade.
Every person has their own reason for setting up a catfishing scheme. Some people do it just because they want to see if they can have a good time. Stories like the old email con from the supposed Nigerian prince who needed money do it for financial gain. Sometimes it’s a desperate attempt to connect with someone and establish a romantic connection. There are even cases like the one involving Jonelle Potter who launched a catfishing campaign that hJonishing convinced her father and boyfriend to murder for her.
The good news is that most catfishing schemes don’t end in murder, though the victims frequently lose a great deal of money to the catfisher before the con runs its course. In 2021, 3,023 California victims revealed that not only had they become ensnared in a catfishing scam, but that they had given the person running the scam. It’s estimated that the 3,023 victims collectively lost $183,928,230. And that was just in California!
The laws surrounding catfishing are… murky.
Many states don’t have a law that specifically prohibits catfishing. What they do have are laws that deal with the outcome of catfishing, such as extortion and fraud. If convicted of either offense, the person who perpetrated the catfishing scheme will be a felon and likely spend some time in a state prison. It’s also highly likely that additional crimes such as identity theft (if you assume the identity of a real person for your catfishing scheme,) phishing, and electronic harassment.
3 Common Social Media Crimes
Most of us love social media sites. They provide us with an easy way to stay in touch with loved ones, the ability to let people know what we’re up to and to simply check in with someone.
What many of us don’t think about is how individuals with criminal intentions can use social media against us.
If you love your social media platforms, there are some common social media crimes you should know about. Once you’re aware of these crimes and cons, you can take steps to monitor your account and protect yourself.
Hacking
Hacking is a huge problem, particularly with Facebook. Every single day, there are stories about someone’s account either being hacked or someone creating a mirror account and using their newly gained access to gain access to another person’s computer files, contacts, and personal information.
In many cases, these hacking cases eventually turn into identity theft situations which is why it’s important to quickly change passwords and contact the social media platform’s administrators as soon as the hacking attempt is discovered.
Stalking and Bullying
Everything good has a downside. The praise, encouragement, and general good vibes you receive when you share the good news on social media sites are balanced by the stalking and bullying that is found all over social media. The bullying is bad. It can quickly eat at the victim’s self-confidence. There have even been cases of social media bullying leading to suicide.
Alongside the bullying is stalking. While this is mostly only discussed when someone is talking about a public profile, it can be a problem for anyone who uses social media sites. Not only can a stalker follow us virtually, but when we post personal information, including pictures of our homes/cars/vacation spots, we create a situation where a stalker could also start following us in real-time. This is why it’s so important to be very conscious about how much personal information you post on social media sites and to carefully go over every picture and make sure there isn’t anything a stalker could use to pinpoint your location.
Vacation Robberies
Vacation robberies have been around forever, the original Home Alone plot was based around a vacation robbery, but they used to require the thieves to pay attention to a specific neighborhood and learn the signs that someone was out of town. Today, thieves who participate in vacation robberies simply have to pay attention to social media and see who is talking about vacation while they are out of town.
The best way to avoid being a victim of a vacation robbery is to resist the urge to post vacation photos on your social media sites until you’re home. When posting, be very clear that you’re home and that your home isn’t ripe for a robbery.
What steps do you take to avoid common social media crimes?
The Most Common Crimes in California
There are some crimes that the California court system deals with more than others.
DUIs
It doesn’t seem to matter how often drivers are warned about the dangers of drinking and driving, people are still doing just that. Every single day, someone in California gets caught driving after they’ve had too much to drink.
This is a fairly simple crime to avoid. If you want to drink, either make sure you have a reliable designated driver, are prepared to call for a ride home, or give yourself plenty of time to sober up before you get behind the wheel. If none of these things are possible, either stay home and drink or stick to non-alcoholic beverages while you’re out on the town.
Drug Related Crimes
Like most states, there is a serious drug problem in California. While California is often praised for being progressive about both drug laws and drug treatments, there is no getting around the fact that drug crimes are still abundant in the state. The number of fatalities connected to drug use has been steadily climbing. In 2000 there were only 500 deaths in California were attributed to drug use. That number climbed to about 2,200 in 2019.
Drugs commonly linked to drug-related crimes in California include:
- Cocaine
- Opioids
- Meth
- Heroin
Theft
Many cases involving theft make their way through the California court system every single year. Many people don’t even realize how many different types of theft occur in the state during a year. When the average person hears about theft, they usually think about breaking and entering and shoplifting. The truth is that there are numerous different ways you can be charged with theft.
Different types of theft charges in California include:
- Breaking and Entering
- Fraud
- Car theft
- Embezzlement
- Shoplifting
- Robbery
- Petty theft
- Grand theft
Assault
It is rare for 24 hours to pass without at least one person in most of California’s cities getting charged with some type of assault. The circumstances surrounding the incident determine how serious the assault charges are. In some cases, the charge is a simple assault which is something that generally happens when a conversation gets heated and punches are thrown. Simple assault is typically a misdemeanor.
The opposite end of the scale is aggravated assault which generally involves the use of some type of weapon and someone getting seriously hurt.
Proposition 57
Traditionally, whenever a law/proposition is proposed that involves crime, it’s a move to actually create stricter laws/penalties. This is especially true when it comes to violent crimes and repeat offenders. In many cases, when you research the reasoning behind the proposal, you’ll discover that crime rates have been steadily increasing and the voting population is starting to feel insecure and has been applying pressure to the officials they voted into office.
Proposition 57 is a result of people looking at the current state of California’s criminal justice system and questioning if using longer forms of incarceration is really the best way to encourage a person to change their ways. Many California residents have also started wondering if maybe there isn’t a better way to spend the millions of tax dollars that are currently used to house/feed/clothe criminals. Many wonder if spending that money on rehabilitation/education programs might be a better solution.
While many lawmakers were skeptical about the future of Proposition 57, after all, who ever heard of the voting public liking laws that were viewed as being soft on crime, in November 2016, California voters passed the proposition.
The interesting thing about Proposition 57 is that it placed the issue of rehabilitation squarely in the hands of convicted criminals. What the proposition did was created an incentive program for inmates that allowed them to be responsible for their own rehabilitation while also increasing the odds of them being granted parole.
Proposition 57 created a credit program. Inmates who were well-behaved and who also took part in an in-prison rehabilitation/education program received a credit.
The different credits created by Proposition 57 include:
- Good Conduct Credits
- Educational Merit Credits
- Milestone Completion Credits
- Rehabilitative Achievement Credits
The great thing about these credits is that anyone who has been convicted of a non-violent crime has the opportunity to really prove that they are not considered a violent risk to the community and should be considered for parole. The parole board looks at the credits an inmate has earned and their criminal history and is more inclined to grant them early release.
Recently the California Supreme Court heard a case that prompted them to rule that Proposition 57 did not apply to incarcerated criminals who have a history of violent crimes. “In reaching this conclusion, we find the constitutional text (of the ballot initiative) is ambiguous,” Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote on behalf of the court. The ruling made it impossible for inmates who were serving sentences for a combination of violent and nonviolent crimes to use the credit program to qualify for early parole.
The Purpose of Proposition 47
The purpose of Proposition 47 is to make some changes to felony sentencing laws.
Proposition 47 officially became law in 2014. At the time it had the distinction of being one of the biggest changes to laws to alter the ability for convicted felons to receive housing, admittance into the workforce, and other issues that had previously made it impossible for them to enjoy a quality life after they served their sentence. The way this was done was taking non-violent felony convictions and turning them into misdemeanors. The hope was that by lowering the barriers convicted felons faced when they were released from prison, they would be better able to become a useful member of society and be less likely to return to a life of crime.
When Proposition 47 became law, it was estimated that over 1 million people living in California would be able to change their non-violent felony conviction records into more socially acceptable misdemeanors.
The three changes the passing of Proposition 47 triggered include:
- Turning some nonviolent theft and drug laws from felonies into misdemeanors
- Allowing anyone currently serving time for a felony that could now be reclassifying to petition the court for a change of sentence
- Allowing individuals who’d completed their sentence for a felony that was now considered a misdemeanor to change their criminal history
While there was a great deal of concern about what would happen once Proposition 47 became law, the impact it has had on California has been mostly positive.
Improved Public Perception
One of the biggest positive changes it made was changing the way the rest of the country perceived California’s judicial and prison situation. When California first passed the three-strikes law, many objections were raised, and several people stated that the three-strike laws proved that there was something inherently wrong with the way California treated criminals.
The passing of Proposition 47 proved to the world that California was prepared to give people a second chance as well as an opportunity at a better life.
Less Prison Overcrowding
Overcrowding in the prisons has been a huge issue for California. The sheer number of people housed in the state’s prisons is not safe. While Proposition 47 hasn’t totally reversed California’s prison overcrowding situation, it has helped.
Better Criminal Rehabilitation
One of the things California lawmakers discovered after they passed the three-strike law was that tougher sentences didn’t really encourage criminal rehabilitation. In some cases, the three-strike laws seemed to make things worse.
When Proposition 47 became law, it allowed some people to be released from prison which created some room in the budget. This extra money has been used to help finance criminal rehabilitation programs.
Schools have Benefited
In 2016 a fund connected to Proposition 47 was started that helped benefit schools throughout California. The funding came in the form of grants that were designed to help reduce the number of truancy issues the schools dealt with on a daily basis. The hope is that the extra funding will decrease the drop out rate. With more children completing high school and able to enter the workforce, hopefully petty crime rates will decrease.
Perhaps the most encouraging thing the state of California has experienced since the passing of Proposition 47 is that there hasn’t been a noticeable increase in violent crime since 2014.
Fraudulent Use of a Credit Card
Credit card fraud happens when someone uses another person’s credit card to either make unauthorized purchases or to withdraw/transfer funds.
There are two main ways that credit card fraud takes place. The first method involves someone either finding or stealing another person’s credit card. Instead of turning it in, the person decides to put the credit card to use and goes on a shopping spree.
The second way that credit card fraud happens is when one person hacks into another person’s credit card accounts, steals the numbers, and starts using them for themselves.
The good news is that you have it in your power to limit the amount of strain both types of credit card fraud puts on your life. The first thing you need to do is become vigilant about checking your credit card statement for unfamiliar charges. The best approach is to have email alerts sent to you each time your card is used. If that’s not possible, get into the habit of logging into your credit card account and checking the transactions at least once a day.
As soon as you see charges that you didn’t make, you need to leap into action and arrange to have your current credit card canceled and a new one issued. Once you’ve done that, start working with your credit card company to get the charge reversed. The sooner you contact the insurance company, the better.
California lawmakers take credit card fraud very seriously. Using another person’s credit card without that person’s permission is illegal. The exact consequences depend on which of California’s laws were broken. In some cases, credit card fraud is only a misdemeanor while in others it is treated as a serious felony. In serious cases, someone who is convicted of credit card fraud in California could be sentenced to three years in prison and also be charged a large fine.