Court Opinion

ID: 9682851
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:18:32.729835+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:42.614939
License: Public Domain

John I. Purtle, Justice, dissenting. Either something is wrong with our criminal justice system or something is wrong with this case. No fair system of justice could sanction giving a man fifteen years in prison for stealing a few slices of ham. The prophecy made in the dissent in Jarrett v. State, 265 Ark. 662, 580 S.W.2d 460 (1979), has now been fulfilled. Although the ham slices in this case, which were in the appellant’s jacket pocket, may have been worth more than the fifteen cents referred to in the Jarrett dissent, the principle is still the same. There it was stated: “In practical application the majority view here would allow a robbery conviction for a person who took a 15-cent item and ran and, while running, accidentally bumped into someone in a crowd of people.” The food store manager noticed the appellant putting the ham slices in his pocket and followed him to the cash register; observing that the appellant did not pay for the ham slices, the manager asked him to come of the office. An off-duty policeman, serving as a security guard for the store, assisted, and the appellant accompanied them to the store office. When asked for the ham, the appellant took it out of his coat pocket and laid it on the desk. The officer then took his coat. The coat, I am sure, was worth considerably more than the eighty-nine cent package of ham. After “ten or fifteen minutes,” the appellant decided to leave. In getting up out of the chair, where he had been placed by the off-duty policeman, he shoved the officer. The manager of the store described the encounter between the officer and the appellant in the following words: The gentlemen doesn’t have much of a shirt left on him because Jim is trying to hang on and he is trying to run. Becker was trying to get away from Officer Kibat. I don’t think it was his intention to try to beat Officer Kibat. It really wasn’t a fight, it was more or less Jim hanging on. I guess the part of the fight would be just trying to keep him there, would be part of the fight. The only thing that I seen the gentlemen, the contact that he put on Jim Kibat was when he was sitting in the chair and he came up like this and knocked him against the wall. I did not see any punches swung at any time from anybody. He did shove the police officer. . . . I did not see him strike the police officer with his fist. I did not find a weapon on Mr. Becker, I did not see a gun, or a knife or a baseball bat. When Mr. Becker came into the office and I confronted him he put the ham on the table. When he decided to leave he left both pieces of ham and a flint. The statute which allows a misdemeanor to be elevated to the felony of robbery requires that a person committing a theft, in his effort to avoid apprehension, “employs or threatens to immediately employ physical force upon another.” By no stretch of the imagination can it be said that the appellant, in attempting to avoid apprehension, was using the type of force envisioned by this statute. He had been in the office from ten to fifteen minutes before he decided to leave. All the force used in this case was directed at the appellant. At most, he bumped into the off-duty officer as he attempted to get up out of his chair to leave the office. He did not have a gun, knife, or other object or weapon and did not strike the officer or anyone else with his fist. If the statute has no plain meaning to the majority, then it behooves them to overcome the argument of vagueness. The opinion does not do so. Any reasonable interpretation of the statute would seem to require the appellant either to use physical force directed at another person or to use threats to employ a gun or knife or some other weapon. He attempted to steal a small amount of ham. No doubt he was hungry. He probably would not have been given more than thirty days had he been charged with shoplifting, the actual offense, instead of the bootstrapped felony which resulted in a fifteen-year prison sentence. Over one hundred twenty-five years ago, Victor Hugo, in Les Misc.ables, attacked the injustice of a system that sentenced a man to imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread. Surely we have made a little progress since that time. Many persons who have taken a human life have received less punishment than the fifteen years meted out to the appellant who tried to pilfer a small package of ham. Justice and mercy cry out against the imposition of such disproportionate punishment. The store manager, who was present from start to finish of the episode, did not even know a robbery had occurred. The reason he did not know it was because only a misdemeanor had occurred. It is cases like this which lead to the overcrowding of our prison system and the devouring of a substantial amount of our tax money. I believe in fair and just punishment delivered without undue delay. However, this case does nothing to promote a fair and just criminal justice system. It is, in fact, a blight upon our system. If this court will not correct it, then the Governor and the General Assembly should.