Case Story: Proving Our Client’s Innocence Against Allegations of Theft

There’s a famous and recurring scene in slasher films where a babysitter, home alone with the children, receives a menacing call from the killer. During the call, the killer threatens the babysitter’s life and the babysitter, fraught with terror, calls the police to report and trace the call.

We all know what happens next.

The police, much to the babysitter’s chagrin, utters the eight iconic words: “The call is coming from inside the home.” Meaning the killer is in the same home as the babysitter, putting her life in serious and immediate jeopardy.

What this horror-movie trope is getting at is the idea that the source of a problem or threat is not external, but originates from within your own group, environment, or situation, implying that danger is closer than you think and could be coming from someone you trust or consider “safe”.

That’s what this case is about.

Our client managed a retail store in Moorhead, Minnesota. One day, the store’s till came up short—meaning money was missing. But rather than doing a real investigation, the store simply jumped to the conclusion that our client must be behind the theft. The state agreed and charged our client with various felonies.

Knowing things often aren’t what they at first seem, we didn’t take the store’s conclusion as gospel, and instead investigated the theft ourselves. When we did, we realized pretty quickly that, while we couldn’t determine who took the money, one thing was certain: it wasn’t our client.

We took our findings to the prosecutor who, upon review, rightfully dismissed the case.

Here’s how we did it.

The Charge

Our client was a long-time employee at a retail store in Moorhead. She was driven, well-liked, and worked her way up to a management position. As manager, her duties included overseeing the store’s money on a day-to-day basis.

So when a large amount of money went missing, she was the first and obvious suspect. The rationale was simple: she’s in charge of the money, the money is gone, so she must have something to do with it.

And that logic would make sense if the store actually ran that way. But it didn’t.

Rather than having strict protocols in place that made it so our client, as manager, was the only person who oversaw the money, the store had practically no protocols in place with respect to the accessing, handling, and management of money.

Given this, when the money went missing, it really was like the boardgame Clue: any number of suspects could be the culprit. And our client told her superiors that.

But they didn’t want to listen. Because listening would mean admitting their protocols were deficient. And would have to be changed. And people would have to be held accountable.

So instead, they simply put the blame on her. They used the straightforward logic above to basically say “you stole the money unless you can prove otherwise.” But that’s not how the criminal law works. It’s the opposite. It’s not our client’s job to prove her innocence. It’s the state’s job to prove her guilt.

And after being pressured by the store, that’s exactly what the state tried to do. Luckily for our client, she got us involved, and we got to work disproving the store’s wrongful assumption.

The Investigation

First, we secured all the audio and video surveillance from the store to analyze and review. This took some time, but eventually we were able to isolate when the store claimed the money went missing.

Armed with this date range, we scrutinized the video surveillance of all employees during all shifts. And what we learned was that there was no “smoking gun” of any kind that showed our client grabbing or taking any money from any part of the store—not the till, not the safe, not anything.

To be fair, there was plenty of footage of our client handling money, but that was no surprise—she was the store manager in charge of the money.

Next, we interviewed our client extensively to understand exactly how “protocol-less” the store was.

Her answers were shocking.

To name just a few: (1) all employees knew the code to open the store after hours and to open the safe; (2) the safe usually was not even closed and locking, giving all employees access to it most of the time; and (3) there was no accounting process to confirm the money from the till matched the money taken to the bank at the end of each day.

In other words, it didn’t matter that our client was the store’s manager. That didn’t mean what the store and the state were trying to imply—that she must have stolen the money because she was the one who was in charge of the money.

The truth was that nobody was in charge of the money. Nobody was in charge of anything.

It was chaos and mismanagement, not our client. Confident in our analysis, we finally took our findings to the prosecutor.

The Decision

To the prosecutor’s credit, he agreed with our conclusions and dismissed the case. While he didn’t give us any specific reasons why, nor did he ever say that he actually believed our client hadn’t committed the theft, his actions spoke louder than his words.

And his actions relate to what the criminal law is all about: proving guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.

Is it possible that our client took this money?

Anything is possible.

But what about if you ask it this way: is there any doubt based on reason that our client took this money?

That answer is much easier: yes, of course there is. And those doubts are the ones we uncovered in our investigation. The ones the store likely knew about and chose to ignore. The ones the state probably didn’t take the time to investigate before charging.

In almost every criminal case, there is doubt based on reason if you look hard enough. If you work hard enough. If you find the seam.

Here, the seam was hard to find. But we found it, exploited it, and got a good result for our client.

It’s not always that way. But when it is, it’s a good feeling. For both us and our client.

The Takeaway

As we stated above, it’s important to remember in this work that things are almost always not what they originally seem. The story is always deeper and more complicated than what is first presented.

Good criminal defense lawyers know that and never jump to conclusions.

Here, the store jumped to a conclusion. The state did too.

We kept our powder dry. We reviewed the evidence. We did an investigation. We kept digging. And what we found was a way to convince the state our client was innocent.

For someone who gave several good years to the job, it was a mixture of vindication and relief. And as always, we’re happy to have helped her get her life back. It’s among the best parts of this job.