We do not believe this approach adequately distinguishes between the sections even if read in the most literal fashion. A person may be said to have 'caused' injury, even if another person is used as an agent to inflict the injury. It is true that the statutes themselves contain no indication as to when the felony prosecution is more appropriate than the misdemeanor prosecution. However, the Practice Commentaries accompanying the statutes do supply some guidance. The Practice Commentaries elaborate on the same basic information as was contained in the Commission Staff Notes on the Proposed Penal Law introduced for study at the 1964 session of the Legislature.
Extortion is an element in two degrees of grand larceny.
The crime of grand larceny in the third degree, a class E felony, is committed when 'property, regardless of its nature and value, is obtained by extortion'. As noted above, the definition of extortion, like misdemeanor coercion, includes threats of personal injury or property damage. Similarly, under the related coercion statutes, it is likely that despite the verbal duplication in the lower degree, the drafters and the Legislature intended that the general rule be that coercion in the first degree, the felony, be charged whenever the method of coercion was to instill a fear of injury to a person or damage to property. In analogous circumstances, we have consistently held that overlapping in criminal statutes, and the opportunity for prosecutorial choice they represent, is no bar to prosecution. The same result follows even where the overlap is inherent in the definitions of two offenses.