Court Opinion

ID: 9732053
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:06:21.387895+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:22.801142
License: Public Domain

SPARKS, J.
I dissent.
In California, the taking of property of any value “from the person of another” constitutes the crime of grand theft. (Pen. Code, § 487, subd. 2.) If the property is not taken from the person, then the value of the stolen property must either exceed $400 or be of a specified type in order for the crime to be elevated from the misdemeanor offense of petty theft to that of felony grand theft.1 (Pen. Code, § 487, subds. 1 & 3.) The issue in this case has been considered in an exhaustive annotation and is “whether larceny from the person requires that the property stolen actually be on or attached *1095to the person of the victim when taken or whether there are circumstances under which the offense may be committed even though the property when taken was not [in] the victim’s actual possession.” (Annot., What Constitutes Larceny “From a Person” (1976) 74 A.L.R.3d 271, 274.) As the annotation explains, “[i]n many jurisdictions, there are statutes imposing a penalty greater than for simple larceny for larcenies involving, in a typical statute, a taking ‘from the person of another.’ In cases involving such statutes, the question of what constitutes a taking ‘from a person’ has frequently arisen, especially where the property involved was not actually on the person of the victim when it was taken, but instead was merely close to him. In answering this question, the courts have split, one group taking the position that the property must have been on the victim’s person when taken and the other group holding that it is sufficient if the property was merely within the victim’s immediate presence.” {Ibid., fns. omitted.) The rationales for holding that the property must be taken directly from the victim’s person “include the purpose behind the original larceny from the person statute, that is, to prevent pickpocketing and similar offenses, the general purpose behind such statutes of imposing a greater penalty for thefts endangering the person of the victim, and analogy to robbery statutes defining robbery as a taking from the victim or from his immediate presence, thereby suggesting that ‘from the person’ is different from ‘immediate presence.’ ” (Id. at p. 275.)
Early on, California joined the group of courts holding that the property taken must have been on the victim’s person. In People v. McElroy (1897) 116 Cal. 583 [48 P. 718], the California Supreme Court held that theft of money in the victim’s pants, which he had removed and was using as a pillow, did not constitute grand theft. As the high court noted, “[t]he stealing of property from the person has been from an early period under the English statutes treated as a much graver and more heinous offense than ordinary or common theft—partly by reason of the ease with which it can be perpetrated and the difficulty of guarding against it, and partly because of the greater liability of endangering the person or life of the victim. The same general reason and purpose animate the modern statutes, including our own, and, as in England, the offense is made punishable as a felony. The difficulty has been in defining with precision in all cases what constitutes a taking from the person, and this has given rise to some confusion in the authorities on the question as to whether the property must be actually on, or attached to, the person, or merely under the eye, or within the immediate reach, and so constructively within the control of the owner.” (Id. at pp. 584-585.) In light of its origin, the purpose of the grand theft statute, the court declared, “was to protect persons and property against the approach of the pickpocket, the purse-snatcher, the jewel abstracter, and other thieves of like character who obtain property by similar means of stealth or fraud, *1096and ... it was in contemplation that the property shall at the time be in some way actually upon or attached to the person, or carried or held in actual physical possession—such as clothing, apparel, or ornaments, or things contained therein, or attached thereto, or property held or carried in the hands, or by other means, upon the person; that it was not intended to include property removed from the person and laid aside, however immediately it may be retained in the presence or constructive control or possession of the owner while so laid away from his person and out of his hands. . . . Had the legislature intended that the offense should include instances of property merely in the immediate presence, but not in the manual possession about the person, it would doubtless have so provided, as it has in defining robbery.” (Id. at p. 586.)
The fact that the victim’s head was touching the pants when they were taken was not sufficient, the court held, to constitute a taking from the person. “The garment from which the money was taken was not at the time on the person of [the victim]; it was folded up and used as part of his bed. Had the garment alone been taken under like circumstances the theft could not be held to have been from the person. A man does not wear his bed as he does his clothes. The money was no more on his person in any proper sense than if it had been left concealed under his bed or elsewhere about it, or left in his clothes upon a chair or hanging on the wall.” (People v. McElroy, supra, 116 Cal. at pp. 586-587.)
Despite this instructive and controlling case, the majority mistakenly holds that the theft of a bag from a shopping cart pushed by the victim constitutes grand theft. If grabbing pants out from under the victim’s head does not constitute grand theft of the person, it is hard to fathom how grabbing a bag out of a shopping cart does. Paraphrasing the McElroy court, a woman does not carry a shopping cart as she does her grocery bag. The bag in the cart was no more on her person in any proper sense than if it had been left next to her on the car seat or on the checkout counter.
Two critical points elude the majority. The first is that the property taken must be manually affixed or attached to the body so that its taking will potentially endanger the victim. In the words of the McElroy court, grand theft from the person causes “greater liability of endangering the person or life of the victim” (116 Cal. at p. 584) and in the words of the annotator, “endanger[s] the person of the victim.” (Annot., What Constitutes Larceny “From a Person” (1976) 74 A.L.R.3d 271, 275.) This potential endangerment of the person of the victim is what is lacking in the present larceny. No doubt the theft in this case startled the victim; perhaps it even frightened her. But what it did not do was endanger her physical person. The grabbing of the grocery bag out of the shopping cart, unlike snatching it from her hand, would not cause the victim to fall or to engage in an *1097injury-producing tug of war or to otherwise be subjected to the likelihood of physical injury. Thus, one of the central purposes for elevating a common theft to the more severe crime of grand theft is missing in this case.
The second point is that the manner by which the property is carried is the controlling factor. If the property is bodily carried on the person of the victim, then its larcenous taking constitutes grand theft. But if the property is conveyed by means of some mechanical contrivance, be it a shopping cart, a wagon, a hand truck, a dolly, a sled, a wheelbarrow, a gurney or the like, then the property stolen cannot be characterized as having been taken “from the person.” (Pen. Code, § 487, subd. 2.) In such a case, the theft is from the cart or other conveyance and not from the person. It is not enough to assert, as the majority does, that this case is distinguishable from McElroy because here the victim was carrying the bag “by other means, i.e. through the medium of the shopping cart.” Mediums are what distinguish grand thefts from petty ones. If one uses some medium other than the body to carry the property, then the crime cannot be grand theft person.
Nor does the majority’s claim that the grocery bag was on the victim’s person because it was in the shopping cart and the cart was “attached to [her] person” hold water. The concept of an extension of the person is a legal fiction which, in this context, is simply another name for constructive possession. Of course the bag in the shopping cart remained in the constructive possession of the victim. But as the McElroy court ruled, constructive possession of property by the victim, property which has been “laid away from his person and out of his hands,” is not sufficient to constitute grand theft. (116 Cal. at p. 586.) Here the grocery bag was not physically attached to the victim’s person. Neither her physical contact with the shopping cart, nor her obvious desire to retain possession and control over the bag, suffices to meet the standard mandated by McElroy. The out-of-state cases cited by the majority are inconsistent with this binding construction of the California grand theft statute by the McElroy court and thus should not be followed.
I would reduce the offense to petty theft and then remand the case to the juvenile court to reconsider its disposition in light of this reduction.
Appellant’s petition for review by the Supreme Court was denied June 20, 1991. Mosk, J., and Broussard, J., were of the opinion that the petition should be granted.

 Petty theft is punishable by a fine or by imprisonment in the county jail for six months. (Pen. Code, § 490.) Grand theft of anything except a firearm, on the other hand, is punishable by imprisonment in the county jail for one year or in the state prison for sixteen months, two years or three years. (Pen. Code, §§ 18, 489, subd. (b).)