{"id":183,"date":"2026-04-16T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=183"},"modified":"2026-04-16T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T12:00:00","slug":"people-v-harzan-conviction-reversed-entrapment-defense-prior-misconduct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/california.shuster.info\/?p=183","title":{"rendered":"People v. Harzan \u2014 Conviction Reversed Where Trial Court Forced Defendant to Choose Between Entrapment Defense and Excluding Decades-Old Sexual Misconduct Evidence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Case<\/dt>\n
People v. Harzan<\/dd>\n
Court<\/dt>\n
4th District Court of Appeal, Division Three<\/dd>\n
Date Decided<\/dt>\n
2026-04-16<\/dd>\n
Docket No.<\/dt>\n
G064798<\/dd>\n
Status<\/dt>\n
Reported \/ Citable<\/dd>\n
Topics<\/dt>\n
Entrapment defense; Evidence Code section 1108; right to present a defense; sting operation; prior sexual misconduct evidence<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

Background<\/h2>\n

In May 2020, Jan Curtis Harzan, then 65, posted a Craigslist ad in the Missed Connections section that referenced wanting to find his “young coed friend.” An undercover Huntington Beach vice detective who specialized in internet crimes against children responded to the ad pretending to be a 13-year-old girl named “Brianna.” Over a nine-day period, Harzan and the undercover detective exchanged messages. Harzan repeatedly told the detective he should not have sex with a 13-year-old, but the detective continued to push for contact. Eventually Harzan agreed to a meeting where he was arrested.<\/p>\n

Harzan was charged with communicating with and arranging to meet a minor with the intent to commit a sexual offense. At trial, the court ruled there was sufficient evidence to support an entrapment instruction. The entrapment defense in California is an objective one: it asks whether law enforcement conduct was likely to induce a normally law-abiding person to commit the offense. However, the court ruled that if Harzan presented an entrapment defense, the prosecution would be allowed to introduce evidence of sexual misconduct Harzan had allegedly engaged in nearly 50 years earlier when he was a teenager.<\/p>\n

To keep the highly prejudicial old misconduct out of evidence, Harzan abandoned his entrapment defense. He was convicted as charged. He appealed.<\/p>\n

The Court’s Holding<\/h2>\n

The Fourth District Court of Appeal, Division Three, reversed. The court held that requiring Harzan to surrender his entrapment defense in order to keep his decades-old prior sexual misconduct out of evidence violated his constitutional right to present a defense.<\/p>\n

The trial court’s ruling effectively imposed an unconstitutional condition on the exercise of a fundamental right. While Evidence Code section 1108 generally permits prior sexual offense evidence in sex crime cases, the trial court had broad discretion under Evidence Code section 352 to exclude such evidence based on its substantial prejudicial effect. Allegations of misconduct from when Harzan was a teenager nearly 50 years earlier were so distant in time and so different in context from the charged offense that their probative value was minimal compared to their highly prejudicial nature. The trial court should have excluded the evidence regardless of whether Harzan presented an entrapment defense.<\/p>\n

By tying admissibility of the prior misconduct to Harzan’s choice to present an entrapment defense, the trial court essentially forced him to abandon a defense the trial court itself had found supported by sufficient evidence. The constitutional right to present a defense includes the right to make tactical choices about which defenses to assert without being penalized for those choices through the admission of otherwise inadmissible prejudicial evidence.<\/p>\n

The court found the error prejudicial and reversed the conviction. The court rejected Harzan’s separate sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenge, finding substantial evidence supported the convictions, but the prejudicial constitutional error required reversal regardless.<\/p>\n

Key Takeaways<\/h2>\n