A Utah man is suing his public defenders after he says they schemed to get an arrest warrant to put him in jail. The lawsuit stems from a hearing in March 2018, where Luis Sanchez was scheduled to be in court for charges alleging he drove drunk more than three years prior. Sanchez was supposed to be there at 9 a.m., but he alleges in a lawsuit filed recently in 3rd District Court that his court-appointed attorneys, Daniel Torrence and Heather Chesnut, called his case early — at about 8:45 a.m. — so that a warrant would be issued for his arrest. “Let’s call it and get a warrant,” Torrence whispers to Chesnut, according to a video of that day in court. “Is it time? 8:40. OK. Four minutes. 8:45.” After a few minutes, the attorneys stand at a podium and tell the judge they are ready to go on Sanchez’s case. But because he wasn’t there, a warrant for his arrest was issued. Sanchez said in an interview that he thought the public defenders wanted him in jail because he had wanted to challenge the charges. “From the beginning, they didn’t want me to fight the case,” he said. “They were pressuring me to plead guilty. At one point, I had to file my own motions.”
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