When we last checked in on Gregory Ruiz Aguirre–in March of last year, to be precise–the El Monte 53-year-old had just been sentenced to 457 days in jail, five years probation and mandatory sex offender registration for arranging to meet a “13-year-old girl” who was actually a Huntington Beach cop. He was also looking at four years in prison if he violated parole.
Now he's looking at nothing.
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Three justice of the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana have ruled that Orange County Superior Court Judge Lance Jensen erred in his jury instructions by failing to mention a possible entrapment defense.
Though Aguirre and his attorneys never sought those instructions, the judge should have realized there was “substantial evidence of entrapment,” according to the appeals panel.
That sends the Aguirre case back to trial, and the Orange County District Attorney's office is weighing how to proceed.
Aguirre was among six men who responded to the Huntington Bech Police Department's fake personal ads posted on craigslist. His exchange with who he believed to be a 13-year-girl looking to make $100 began on May 18,
2010, first rather casually–as befits the Casual Encounters category–and then quite sexually. He discussed oral sex and other sex acts before setting up a meeting.
On May 26, 2010, Aguirre drove to the arranged meeting
place in Huntington Beach. Upon arrival, he was pulled over by a
Huntington Beach patrol car and taken into custody. A jury on March 2, 2011, found him guilty of one
felony count each of meeting a minor with intent to engage in lewd
contact, attempted lewd act on a child under 14, and contacting a child
with the intent to commit a specified crime.
“Our analysis suggests the government should not be in the business
of testing the will of law-abiding citizens with elaborate (if
improbable) fantasies of sensuous teenagers desperate to engage in
sexual acts with random middle-aged men,” wrote Justice
Raymond Ikola in the opinion.
“. . . Our review of the record suggests a reasonable jury could find that
the police conduct would illegitimately ensnare normally law-abiding
individuals in an illegal conversation they would not have otherwise
pursued. In sum, the jury might have believed the
conduct of the police was likely to induce a normally law-abiding person
to commit some or all of the charged crimes. We therefore reverse the
judgment.”
Justices Richard Fybel
and William Rylaarsdam concurred.
Previous coverage:
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.