2008 conviction reversed

A Long Beach man who was sentenced to 25 years to life under California’s three strikes law for receiving stolen property from Newport Beach will be freed after having his conviction overturned.

William John Crockett, 37, was convicted in 2008 of receiving stolen cash from his neighbor, Aaron Shane King, 35. With prior convictions for felony burglary and robbery in 1991 and 1992, the judge sentenced Crockett to 25 years to life in prison.

Citing a lack of evidence from the prosecution, a three-judge Court of Appeal panel in Santa Ana on Friday overturned that conviction.

According to court documents, in the early morning hours of June 12, 2007, Crockett met up with King so the two could do landscaping on King’s father’s home in Brea. King and Crockett were neighbors in the same Long Beach apartment complex and had met days before.

Hours before the two set out to work, King had been smoking methamphetamine and started driving through Orange County, looking for things to steal. King came upon an open garage in Newport Beach, where a man had left his laptop and $420 cash inside. King stole the laptop and money and headed home, where he smoked more meth.

At 4:30 a.m., he and Crockett headed out to Brea to start work early and avoid the summer heat. Crockett said he needed cash to buy cigarettes so King advanced him his pay.

King never told Crockett he had stolen the cash hours earlier, or that he was in a car with stolen property inside, according to court documents. High on meth, King got lost on the way to his dad’s house and ended up back in Newport Beach where police pulled them over.

Police found the stolen property and arrested King and Crockett. King pleaded guilty to burglary and Crockett opted to take his case to trial, arguing that he wasn’t there for the burglary and didn’t know the cash he had was stolen. The jury believed him about the burglary, but not about the cash.

Crockett was also arguing that a 25 to life sentence was cruel and unusual punishment, but given what the Court of Appeal concluded, that ended up not being necessary.

The panel ruled that just because the jury didn’t believe King’s testimony that he didn’t tell Crockett about the burglary, doesn’t prove the prosecutor’s case. There was no evidence that Crockett knew where the money came from, so they couldn’t convict him of it, the panel concluded.

“Because no evidence apart from [Crockett’s] mere possession of recently stolen funds supports his conviction, we must reverse the judgment,” the court concluded.