Court Opinion

ID: 9732819
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 16:37:01.862808+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:34.322172
License: Public Domain

McCown, J.,
dissenting.
Some important factual elements are not fully reflected in the majority opinion. The defendant took the cash register from the service station salesroom when no one else was in the room. At that time the service station attendant was some 50 feet away in a service bay installing a battery in a car. The defendant carried the small cash register out of the service station, across the property, and into a driveway behind and off the service station property where he placed it in a car, and got in himself. The service station attendant saw the defendant leaving with the cash register, pursued him, but did not catch up until after the defendant and the cash register were already in the car. The station attendant attempted to get the cash register back and it was at *557that point in attempting to keep the cash register and also escape that force and violence was used by the defendant.
2 Wharton’s Criminal Law and Procedure, § 559, p. 264, provides: “When the defendant is able to take possession of the property without the use of force or fear but then employs force or fear in order to keep the property or to effect his escape, it is generally held that his offense is not robbery.”
The general distinction between robbery and larceny is in whether the taking is by the use of fear and violence. In general the force and violence must be present at the time of the taking in order to constitute robbery. Force and violence used to keep the property or effect an escape does not generally sustain a charge of robbery. The decisions in many cases seem to be in confusion because of uncertainty as to when a taking is complete. See Annotation, 58 A. L. R. 656.
In Daughtery v. State, 154 Neb. 376, 48 N. W. 2d 76, this court, in a case of larceny, said: “ ‘Any removal of the property after the same is under the complete control of the taker, from the spot where found, with the requisite intent of the taker to steal, is a sufficient asportation * * *.’ ”
On the facts here the cash register was taken by the defendant without force or violence and was removed by the defendant from the building and taken entirely off the premises. At that time larceny was complete and the defendant had obtained possession and control of the stolen cash register. The force and violence used by the defendant to prevent the station attendant from retaking possession or interfering with the escape constituted a separate and distinct crime of assault, but it did not convert the original larceny into a robbery simply because violence was used in effecting an escape.
It is undisputed that larceny is a lesser included offense in the crime of robbery and it is equally clear that the defendant could have been charged with larceny and *558a separate count of assault. The defendant would have been entitled to an instruction here that larceny is a lesser included offense in the crime of robbery had he asked for it. The fact that he failed to ask for it did not convert the larceny and assault into a robbery, nor make the evidence sufficient to sustain the conviction for robbery.