Lawyer is convicted for helping frame school volunteer
A California lawyer has been convicted of false imprisonment by deceit for trying to frame a school volunteer on drug charges.
Jurors convicted Irvine lawyer Kent Wycliffe Easter, 40, on Wednesday in his second trial on the charges, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register, the Associated Press and the Orange County Weekly report. His wife, Jill Easter, pleaded guilty in the scheme last year and has already completed her 120-day jail sentence. Her law license was suspended because of the conviction.
Jurors had deadlocked in Kent Easter’s first trial.
Prosecutors had contended the Easters tried to frame school volunteer Kelli Peters, who was also a PTA president, because they thought Peters had left the Easters’ 7-year-old son unsupervised when he was not with the group of kids waiting for their parents after school, according to the Orange County Register and the Orange County Weekly. The Easters also thought Peters was talking about their son’s intelligence when she said he was slow, prosecutors said. The volunteer had intended to communicate that the boy was slow in catching up to the other children.
Prosecutors claimed Jill and Kent Easter had planted drugs in Peters’ unlocked car in February 2011. Then Kent Easter called police, using a fake name and a phony accent, to report he had spotted someone in Peters’ car driving erratically with drugs in the vehicle, prosecutors said.
Kent Easter had maintained he didn’t help plant drugs in the car, and he made the call to placate his wife, who said she had seen Peters driving recklessly and taking pills in the school parking lot. He made the call from a hotel across the street from his office.
Peters has filed a civil suit that is still pending against the Easters. It claims false imprisonment and infliction of emotional distress.
