Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Prosecuting Attorney Family Members being in contact with accused

Doesn't pass the smell test, does it. Could be a breach of the applicable code of legal ethics. I would certainly bring it to the attention of the attorney for the defendant. It could also constitute a violation of his civil rights that would entitle him to sue. One factor would be the offer price and its relation to fair market value.

Re: Prosecuting Attorney Family Members being in contact with accused

I think Mr. Stone misread the question. The way I read it, all the relative did was inspect the house the same way other potential buyers might. Mr. Stone seems to think the relative actually bought the house and managed to get it for below market value.

If my reading is correct, then I don't see a legal issue. For one thing, the relative may have been acting on his own and may genuinely have been interested in buying the house. If this is the case then there's no problem.

I also note that your question does not say the defendant actually *owns* the home. Indeed, you seem to have been careful not to say so, which suggests that the home was a rental unit. If the defendant doesn't own the property and no longer leases it, then he has no rights to it at all and cannot complain about who enters or under what circumstances.

But let's assume that the defendant owns the home and that the prosecutor's relative visited as an investigator. I still don't see much of a legal problem here. Keep in mind that the prosecutor already has the benefit of the police reports about the crime scene, and the police presumably were able to get a lot more information than a potential buyer ever could. I doubt that an undercover investigator touring the house long after the crime would find any useful information the prosecutor didn't already have.

Prosecutors use investigators to gather information all the time, and examining a crime scene strikes me as a normal type of investigation. Perhaps there are problems with misrepresenting the investigator's identity, but I doubt it. Governments conduct undercover investigations all the time, and the undercover agents are routinely able to get into homes and other properties where they would never have been allowed had they revealed their true identities. Here, the investigator merely got the same type of information the owners were freely giving out to other people, so it doesn't seem likely that he violated anyone's privacy.