Following a ruling by state’s highest court, an Appellate Division, Third Department, panel upheld the robbery conviction of a woman for stealing earrings that she apparently discarded after she had fled the store.
The panel had earlier reduced the robbery counts against Hazel Gordon to petit larceny, holding that the more serious charges could not stand because no stolen property was recovered as evidence from Gordon or her accomplices. But the Court of Appeals recently reinstated the robbery convictions in a 5-2 ruling in People v. Gordon, 2014 NY Slip Op 04227, finding that by blocking the more serious charges, the court would be rewarding the criminal activity of discarding stolen merchandise and would place an “insurmountable burden” on prosecutors (NYLJ, June 13).
