For an attorney to tell a potential victim or witness to a crime committed, or to be committed, by the

• P.C. § 136.1(b)(1): Dissuading a Victim or Witness from Reporting a Crime
• P.C. § 137(b): Inducing a Witness to Withhold Information
• Witness Tampering
• The Rule of Lenity
• Due Process and Notice of Criminal Conduct

A defense attorney misrepresenting himself to be a deputy district attorney, while telling a person to contact him instead of the police should she be victimized by the attorney’s client in the future, may or may not be a violation of P.C. § 136(b)(1); Dissuading a Victim or Witness from Reporting a Crime.  Therefore, due to the ambiguity of whether P.C. § 136(b)(1) applies to crimes that have not yet occurred, the Rule of Lenity dictates that the defendant be given the benefit of the doubt, protecting him from being criminally charged.  Such an act, however, is a crime under P.C. § 137(b); Inducing a Witness by Fraud to Withhold Information.

Defendant Octavio Joseph Reyes was a Solano County Public Defendant with less than three years on the job when he was assigned to represent one Jacques Olivas.  Olivas was charged with abusing his mother and resisting arrest.  Defendant negotiated a plea deal on June 13, 2018, where Jacques Olivas pled “no contest” to the resisting arrest charge (per P.C. § 148(a)(1)), with all other charges dismissed.  Put on probation, Olivas was ordered as a condition of his probation not to annoy, harass, or threaten his mother (Evelyn Olivas) and not to have any uninvited contact with her.  It took less than two weeks (June 26) for Olivas to be returned to court with new charges filed and an allegation that he had violated his probation.  On July 3rd, defendant worked another plea deal for Olivas where ....