It's a terrible feeling to be accused of something you didn't do. I think many of us faced it as some time or another, and it's disheartening when someone, either a friend whose trust you value or an authority figure, decides that you did something and they're pushing you to confess your wrongdoing.
I'd like to say that never happens in our legal system, but it does. People get wrongfully arrested all the time. In theory, it works out in the end, but that's really not how everything goes. After all, imagine you've been accused of some crime. It's a serious one, and you're looking at serious prison time, but the prosecutors come to you with a deal.
If you plead guilty to this misdemeanor, they'll make the felony go away.
Do you risk it? A lot of us would probably say that we would, but that's easy to say when you're not looking at years in prison and the end of your gun rights forever. A misdemeanor likely just means probation, and you get to keep your gun rights.
So, a lot of people just say yes.
But Stephen Daniel Cord is not most people.
Stephen Daniel Cord left his home in Tremonton to drive to work on July 18, 2023, just as he had been doing for years.
But just a mile down the road he was pulled over. He was placed in handcuffs and driven back to his house, where there were now law enforcers from the Utah Attorney General's Office, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Box Elder County Sheriff's Office and several other agencies swarming in and around the home.
"I'm thinking there has to be some kind of misunderstanding. I have no idea what this could be about," Cord said.
He soon found out he was being accused of stealing guns from his employer, Doug's Shoot'n Sports, 4926 S. Redwood Road, and illegally selling them. Cord was charged in 3rd District Court with engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity and five counts of retail theft, all second-degree felonies.
Matthew Robert Provard, of South Jordan, who also worked at Doug's Shoot'n Sports, was also charged with engaging in a pattern of unlawful activity and retail theft. Less than a month later, Provard pleaded guilty to retail theft, which was reduced to a class A misdemeanor, and the other felony charge was dropped.
Cord was also offered a plea deal several times. But he refused to take it.
"I will not plead out to something I didn't do in the first place," he said adamantly. "If that's a hill I need to die on, then so be it."
Just a week before he was scheduled to go to trial, the Utah Attorney General's Office recommended that all charges be dismissed, and on Aug. 7 the judge agreed.
Now, six months later, Cord, 43, is eligible to seek expungement of his case from the Utah State Courts database. He is also ready to publicly speak for the first time about what he and his family have been through over the past 2 1/2 years. For Cord, he feels like he was treated as "guilty until proven innocent."
Cord, who was also a firearm trainer, had his life completely shattered by this. He spent a lot of money defending himself, and I get why Provard took the deal. Legal matters are stressful, even if you're just talking about money on the line. It's worse if your freedom is at stake.
But Cord said he didn't do it, and he was convinced that making the stand was the right thing.
Apparently, it was, because it seems the case started falling apart within just days of him being arrested.
At the heart of the issue was that the store in question apparently had three different means of documenting things, and none of them seemed to talk to one another. On top of the ATF paperwork for gun sales, there was the analog cash register, a computer system that was there for something, but also a bulletin board with notes about employee store credit. The inventory system was screwed up, and so it looked like stuff was missing that wasn't.
The problem is that this should have been looked at before an arrest was made. It wasn't, though, and as the prosecution tried to build a case, they found out that nope, this wasn't a crime.
They had to let Cord go, and now he wants his record completely expunged.
I don't blame him. The suspicion of being a thief might prevent some stores from offering him a job, and it may keep people from seeking him out for training. There's always a thought that maybe someone just got away with a thing, after all.
But I'm also a little annoyed that this is necessary. Why should an innocent man have to go through another legal process just to make sure a mistake isn't held against him?
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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