A Cochise County man with a string of bad check prosecutions and evictions for non-payment dating back to 2013 will not go to prison despite admitting last month to trafficking in stolen property, a Class 3 felony.
Lawrence Wayne Fairfield was approved by the Cochise County Attorney’s Office for a diversion program which required him to plead guilty Feb. 10 to one count of trafficking in property he knew or should have known was stolen from a Sierra Vista business in 2019.
Sentencing in the case was ordered postponed by a Cochise County Superior Court judge for the duration of the diversion period, which is normally two years. If Fairfield, 56, successfully completes the program then his guilty plea will be withdrawn and all charges dismissed in the case.
But even if Fairfield is kicked out of the diversion program his Feb. 10 plea deal guarantees a sentence of probation with no more than one-year jail stay. The presumptive prison sentence for the Class 3 based on Fairfield’s criminal history is 3.5-years, according to court records.
In 2018, Fairfield and his wife Ann Marie were the source of warnings by several Sierra Vista area businesses after it was reported that they continued to issue bad checks in the area despite prior prosecution efforts. Many of the business owners expressed displeasure with the lack of legal consequences for the couple.
One of those business owners was Herbert “Jeff” Vaughan, who operated Bum-A-Ride. In December 2017, Fairfield and his wife Ann entered into a plea deal calling for them to make good on $1,074 of bad checks written on a closed account in 2016 to Vaughan’s company.
The Fairfields paid $560 to Vaughan on the day the plea deal was accepted by a Cochise County justice of the peace. If the balance was not paid within three months the couple would each serve six months in jail, the judge said.
However, the judge received word in late March 2018 that the deadline came and went without final payment. Warrants were issued for the couple’s arrest but days later the overdue payment was received by the court and the warrants were quashed.
Another criminal complaint was filed against Lawrence Fairfield in July 2018; it was dismissed one year later at the request of the Cochise County Attorney’s Office. Next week he is scheduled to appear in a Pima County courtroom for a bad check case filed in August 2019.