Articles Posted in Theft

Published on:

By

In a recent case before an appeals court in Arizona, the defendant asked the higher court to reconsider his convictions for theft and unlawful flight from a law enforcement vehicle. The defendant was originally found guilty after he stole a truck and tried to escape from the officers who found him several miles from the truck owner’s home. On appeal, the higher court reviewed the trial record and found no error in the lower court’s proceedings. The court affirmed the convictions and kept the defendant’s sentences in place.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, the owner of a 2005 Dodge Ram came home one evening to notice that his truck had been stolen from his driveway. The man had previously put a Lo-Jack system in his truck, which allowed him to track the vehicle if it were ever stolen. He activated the system and gave the relevant information to the police with the hopes of eventually finding the vehicle.

Soon, officers located the vehicle at a nearby convenience store. They went to the store and found the car by a gas tank. The defendant was in the front of the car, and the defendant’s cousin was filling one of the tires up with air. When an officer approached the truck with a gun drawn, the defendant pulled away and drove off. Officers followed the defendant to his home.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

In a recent case before an Arizona court of appeals, the defendant asked the court to reconsider his guilty verdict in a burglary case. The defendant was originally convicted after a jury unanimously decided he had broken into a friend’s apartment with the intent to steal. According to the defendant, the prosecution had not sufficiently proven that he did not have permission to be inside the apartment. Disagreeing with the defendant, the court denied his appeal.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, the defendant asked a friend of his if he could temporarily stay in her garage. The friend agreed, and the defendant spent a few nights sleeping in the apartment garage. One night, however, he started yelling in the middle of the night. The friend told him he had to leave the next day.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

In a recent case before an Arizona court of appeals, the defendant appealed her convictions for theft and fraudulent schemes. The defendant took issue with the trial court’s conduct during her trial, after which a jury found her guilty of mismanaging several trusts and taking trust owners’ money for herself. After looking closely at the trial record, the court of appeals disagreed with the defendant and kept her convictions and sentences in place.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, the defendant managed the assets of several trusts. Over time, it became clear that in each trust, the amount of money available to the trust owners was dwindling significantly. Upon investigating, the State discovered that the defendant was taking money out of each trust and using it to pay her credit card bills and fund her personal accounts. She also seemed to be fabricating her records of the time she spent managing the trust, recording unreasonably long hours and explaining that the significant payments were because of the high volume of hours she was working.

The State charged the defendant for mismanaging the trusts, and her case went to trial. At trial, the defendant chose to represent herself, despite being offered an attorney. She made several arguments in an attempt to get the case dismissed, but the trial went forward.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

In an April 2023 case before an Arizona court of appeals, the defendant took issue with a police officer’s Miranda warnings when he was arrested and charged. The defendant was originally accused of theft of property, burglary, and theft of a means of transportation. He was subsequently convicted and sentenced, and he appealed promptly. Reviewing the officer’s Miranda warnings on the day of the arrest, the higher court ultimately denied the defendant’s appeal and sustained the original convictions.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, the defendant was accused of stealing a woman’s car after security footage caught him driving away from a fitness center in the vehicle. The woman worked at the fitness center, and she had hung her keys and lanyard on a hook inside the gym. The defendant later took the keys without permission, drove away, and kept the car at a neighbor’s house nearby.

After reviewing the security footage, officers arrived at the defendant’s house. They found the car, arrested the defendant, and brought him in for questioning. The officers gave the defendant Miranda warnings, which are required under the constitution to inform criminal defendants that they have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

In a recent Arizona car theft case, the defendant unsuccessfully appealed his conviction and sentence for theft of a means of transportation. The trial court sentenced the defendant to an enhanced, aggravated prison term of fourteen years. On appeal, the defendant challenged the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction. The appeals court denied his appeal and affirmed his conviction and his sentence.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, one evening in February 2021, a man forced his way into the back door of a home while the resident was not there. The person took a car key fob and several personal items from the home, departing in the resident’s car. Using the car’s global positioning system, the resident was able to track her car to a precise location in Maricopa, where police officers found it early the next morning. The defendant was in the driver’s seat, and another individual was in the passenger’s seat. The defendant was indicted for theft of a means of transportation and then convicted as charged, and sentenced to an enhanced, aggravated prison term of fourteen years following a jury trial. The defendant filed an appeal shortly thereafter.

On appeal, the defendant contended that the state presented insufficient evidence to support his conviction for theft of a means of transportation. The appellate court reviewed de novo the sufficiency of the evidence. In doing so, the appeals court viewed the evidence in the light most favorable to sustaining the jury’s verdict and resolving all inferences against the defendant. The appellate court opinion outlined the evidence presented against the defendant, establishing that the car was stolen and the defendant was found sitting in the driver’s seat of the car several hours later without permission to be in the car.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

In a recent opinion in an Arizona case involving stolen jewelry, the defendant’s request for a new verdict was denied. After having been found guilty of selling stolen property, the defendant appealed by arguing there was insufficient evidence to support her guilty verdict. She also argued that it was actually her co-defendant who should be punished and that she should not be forced to pay the amount of the jewelry. The court disagreed, saying both that the evidence was sufficient to support a guilty verdict and it that was right for the defendant to be the one made to pay the money.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, two defendants were involved in a trafficking charge that revolved around stolen jewelry and an attempt to sell that jewelry to a coin and gold shop. One of the defendants had taken the pieces from an individual’s home, then had given them to the second defendant to sell. When the defendant went into the shop and began showing the pieces to the store owner, it became quickly apparent that the defendant did not know any information about where the pieces had come from or how much money they were worth.

Suspicious, the store owner called detectives after the encounter. When detectives contacted the defendant, she claimed she found the jewelry discarded on the side of the road. The defendant could not, however, provide any details about how or where she found the pieces. At trial, the State charged the defendant with one count of second-degree trafficking in stolen property. She was ordered to pay the store owner as well as the original owner of the jewelry for the cost of the pieces – in total, $13,810.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

In a recent opinion from an Arizona court, a defendant who resisted arrest lost his appeal. The defendant was found guilty of resisting arrest and theft of a vehicle, and he appealed, arguing the jury could not make a proper decision in his case because the language of the judge’s instructions to the jury was incorrect. The court disagreed, ultimately denying the defendant’s appeal.

Facts of the Case

According to the opinion, an Arizona state trooper was checking license plate numbers of vehicles in a hotel parking lot to try and figure out if any of the cars had been stolen. While patrolling, the trooper noticed a car with an “abnormally large” temporary registration. He ran the registration through the system and learned that it was associated with a fake vehicle identification number. Looking inside the vehicle, the trooper noticed that the car’s actual identification number was inside and that its ignition system’s shroud had been completely removed. The trooper then confirmed that the car had been stolen.

Later, detectives saw the defendant walking back and forth between the hotel and the vehicle, loading items into the car. When the defendant was inside the car, officers began to follow him. Once it became clear the officers were trying to stop and arrest the defendant, he got out of the car and began running. Officers chased the defendant on foot, and several officers detained him after he tried to jump over a fence. At one point, detectives had the defendant pinned to the ground, and the defendant continued to fight them until finally allowing them to put him in handcuffs. The defendant was later charged with resisting arrest and theft of means of transportation.

Continue reading →

Published on:

By

Earlier this month, a state appellate court issued a written opinion in an Arizona retail theft case requiring the court to determine if the defendant’s pre- and post-arrest statements to police should have been suppressed at trial. Ultimately, the court concluded that the police officer’s interaction with the defendant before his arrest did not constitute “custodial interrogation,” and thus neither of the defendant’s statements were suppressible.

According to the court’s opinion, police received a call that a man wearing a black and orange backpack walked into a convenience store and took beer on two separate occasions on the same day. Shortly after the second alleged theft, police officers stopped the defendant, who was carrying two 24-packs of beer, one on each shoulder. When asked where he got the beer and how he paid for it, the defendant responded that he got it from a store up the street and that a “higher power” paid for it.

The officer handcuffed the defendant, read him his Miranda rights, and then asked several follow-up questions. The defendant admitted to stealing the beer. The officer then searched the defendant’s backpack, and found additional beer. Finally, the store employees who witnessed the theft were transported to the defendant’s location, and they positively identified him as the person who entered the store and stole the beer.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

In December of last year, a state appellate court issued a written opinion in an Arizona theft case involving a question about the admissibility of the defendant’s confession. Specifically, the court had to determine if the fact that the defendant, who did not speak English, validly waived her constitutional rights before agreeing to make a statement. Ultimately, the court concluded that the defendant was “adequately informed” of her Miranda rights, and affirmed her conviction.

According to the court’s opinion, detectives were investigating a claim that a person was making unauthorized withdrawals from an elderly woman’s account. Through their investigation, the detectives ended up arresting the defendant, a non-native English speaker who was originally from Thailand.

On the way to the police station, the detective spoke with the defendant to assess her fluency in English. She told him that she started to learn English in 1975, when she arrived in the United States, and that she had difficulty understanding the “hard words.” When they got to the station, the detective went over the defendant’s Miranda rights with her, a transcript of which was provided to the court. During the exchange, the defendant repeatedly explained that she did not understand what was going on, expressed an interest in not going to jail, and stated that maybe she should have an attorney present. After this initial exchange, the defendant provided a partial confession that eventually led to her conviction.

Continue reading →
Published on:

By

When someone is arrested for a crime, such as robbery, it is up to the prosecution to determine what charges they will face. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for the prosecution to overcharge a defendant. Typically, when a defendant is overcharged they will have far more charges than necessary, and of a more serious nature. Prosecutors may have several reasons when they overcharge a defendant; however, it is commonly understood that prosecutors overcharge at least in part out of a hope that the serious nature of the charges will persuade the defendant to consider pleading to a lesser offense. Thus, someone who is charged with an Arizona crime must understand the elements of that crime and the prosecution’s chances of proving it at trial.

Robbery is among the most overcharged offenses in Arizona. An Arizona robbery offense is committed when “in the course of taking any property …, such person threatens or uses force against any person with intent either to coerce surrender of property or to prevent resistance to such person taking or retaining property.” Simply stated, a robbery occurs when someone takes or attempts to take an object by force or threat of force. Another way of looking at a robbery offense is that it is an assault that is committed in the course of a theft. Notably, there is no requirement that the person charged with robbery be successful in their attempt to remove an item from another person.

There are several types of defenses to a robbery charge. In some cases, the eyewitness identification may be suspect and susceptible to attack. For example, often, robberies occur in a split second, and an eyewitness’s mental notes about what the alleged doer looked like may not be accurate. However, police will use the eyewitness’ description to stop anyone that matches that description. Once police stop someone they believe matches the description, there may be an issue with the suggestiveness of the identification. For example, if a witness is asked if a suspect was the person that robbed him, and the person is in handcuffs and surrounded by eight police officers, the witness may be subconsciously cued to believe that the suspect was the person who robbed them.

Continue reading →
Contact Information
Law Office of James Novak, PLLC
4500 S Lakeshore Dr #352
Tempe, AZ 85282
Phone: (480) 413-1499Text: (602) 908-8123

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. Submitting a contact form, sending a text message, making a phone call, or leaving a voicemail does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Copyright © 2017 – 2023, The Law Office of James E. Novak
JUSTIA Law Firm Blog Design