Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: misscarriage of justice

No, it's about following court orders and obeying the law. Your friend knew he had a six-year sentence and that all he had to do to avoid spending five of those years behind bars was to show up on a specific date to begin his one-year jail term. He didn't do it.

If he had a medical condition that required treatment he could have explained this to the court and asked for a postponement of his surrender date. Judges aren't made of stone, and if he could prove that the problem was severe but could be cured in a reasonable amount of time there's a decent chance his request would have been granted.

Instead, your friend decided to ignore the court's order as well as the agreement he had made. When a court orders someone to go to jail it is not just a polite suggestion which can be disregarded. Your friend failed to live up to his end of the bargain that would have spared him the six-year prision term, so he is no longer entitled to take advantage of it.

Prosecutors don't care at all about providing workers for prison industries and have no incentive to send more potential workers to prison. Instead of blaming the prosecutor and the system you should put the blame on your friend, where it belongs. He's the one who committed the drug offenses (which must have been fairly serious to earn him a six-year sentence), and he's the one who chose to disobey a court order even though obeying it would have spared him years behind bars.

The judge may decide to give your friend another break, but will probably just send him to prison. The point of his alternative sentence was to give him a chance to prove he can abide by the law for five years, but instead he chose to break the law right off the bat. Judges generally don't respond well to such behavior.

Re: misscarriage of justice

"Miscarriage of justice"? NO, just the consequences of his behavior, brought full circle by the prosecutor actually seeking to impose the sentence your friend agreed to as part of the deal that would have allowed him to avoid 6 years in prison. Had he done what he promised to do, so would the prosecutor and court. All he had to do was go to court to request a continuance and delay. Now they are doing what they said would happen if your friend failed to keep his end of the bargain. This is no different than signing a traffic ticket promising to appear, and failing to do so; a warrant is issued and new charges are added. It may be possible for him to negotiate a new deal, or re-institute the original, but I wouldn't expect that to happen without him serving additional time. I tell clients, criminal and otherwise, that there are ALWAYS consequences to their behavior, whether they like the rules or not. Disreqard of the rules is what got him in trouble to start with; disregard is what is going to cost him time in prison.