Court Opinion

ID: 9715241
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 05:58:20.007658+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:32.791129
License: Public Domain

Sievers, Judge,
concurring.
My colleagues rely upon the Supreme Court’s opinion in State v. Garza, 241 Neb. 256, 487 N.W.2d 551 (1992). With all due respect to the members of the Supreme Court who wrote and adopted Garza and my colleagues here who rely upon it, I believe that if Garza were now reconsidered, a different result *244would occur. I believe our decision here is at odds with the language of our shoplifting statute, § 28-511.01.
The statute makes it a crime to deprive the owner of the possession of the property “or its retail value.” (Emphasis supplied.) § 28-511.01(1). I believe the emphasis must be on “retail value.” Deprivation of retail value can occur by out-and-out theft or by more subtle means which are criminalized in § 28-511.01, including altering the price tag, interchanging price tags with other merchandise, and causing a sales recording device, e.g., scanner, to reflect less than the retail price of the merchandise. The Garza dissent addresses the meaning of the words “retail value,” the deprivation of which makes up the crime of shoplifting. I believe that proof of the price at which a retail merchant offers an item for sale does in fact establish value, an essential statutory element of the crime of shoplifting. The statute speaks extensively of price tags and criminalizes conduct involving altered price tags. Thus, establishing the price, via a price tag, at which an item is offered for sale at the time of its theft or deprivation is sufficient to prove the element of value. See, Nix v. State, 604 So. 2d 920, 922 (Fla. App. 1992) (trial judge is authorized to select either replacement cost or “selling price” as fair market value of goods stolen); State v. Carroll, 186 Neb. 148, 181 N.W.2d 436 (1970) (holding that fair and reasonable market value of stolen property may be established in larceny prosecution by evidence of wholesale or retail values or both and if both are sufficient to establish grand larceny, then it is immaterial whether computation of market value is by reference to wholesale or retail prices); State v. King, 164 N.J. Super. 330, 336 n.1, 396 A.2d 354, 356 n.1 (1978) (shoplifting statute using term “full retail value,” defined as “ ‘the merchant’s stated or advertised price of the merchandise’ ”).
In his dissent in Garza, supra, Justice Boslaugh asserted that the price at which the retail merchant offers shoplifted goods for sale is sufficient evidence of value. I recognize that it is not difficult for the prosecution to ask what probably is only one additional question of the merchant required by the majority in Garza. That question would address whether the merchant had sold the same or similar goods for the same price as the price *245listed on the stolen goods. Nonetheless, I do not believe that the shoplifting statute requires the reversal of a conviction because the only evidence of value is its price tags or Universal Product Codes (as are now nearly universally used in this age of scanners).
The statutory language of § 28-511.01 allows proof of the element of value by the price tag or UPC of the shoplifted merchandise, because that is the “retail value.” If the issue were reconsidered today by the Nebraska Supreme Court, perhaps it would so hold. However, absent such reconsideration, I am bound by principles of stare decisis to follow Garza. Thus, while I would affirm, I am bound under Garza to vote to reverse. Therefore, I concur in the result reached by my colleagues.