My 17 yr old son has been charged with theft-by-deception, 5th degree felony. He drove 2 friends to the store, the friends picked out merchandise, went thru the line of a cashier they were friends with and the cashier marked down the merchandise from $850 to $45. My son was unaware of what was happening, he walked thru the store with the friends then went outside to the parking lot to wait for them. He never touched the merchandise nor went thru the checkout line. He was outside in the parking lot when the purchase was made. When his friends never came out he went into the store to see what was going on and was charged. We have retained an atty and his preliminary hearing is tomorrow morning.
My question is: 2 years ago my son was with a group of different friends and the group decided to take 2 food trays from McDonalds and were going to return them later that night. When they returned them...McDonalds called the police and they charged everyone in the group. It never went to Juvenile Court and my son went straight to diversion...had to complete a class and write an apology. They said if he stayed out of trouble for 6 months it would be dismissed and wouldn't be on his record. He hasn't been in trouble until now.
I haven't told the atty about the diversion program incident because I was told it wouldn't be on his record. Will this come into play tomorrow at the hearing? If it's brought up in court, the atty won't know what they're talking about. I didn't want to tell the atty if I didn't have too because I didn't want him to think my son is a bad kid.
Everyone I have talked to can't believe the officer charged my son...he should have only charged the cashier and buyer. The atty believes it will get dismissed. If this is the case, will my son's previous diversion program even get mentioned? I was thinking if it didn't get dismissed I would tell the atty about it then before we go to trial.

