“[In New York] Grand larceny consists of stealing property with a value exceeding $1000; or stealing a public record, secret scientific material, firearm, credit or debit card, ammonia, telephone with service, or motor vehicle or religious item with value exceeding $100.”
SWAG: It’s used in production of lots of dangerous and illegal things, including explosives and methamphetamines. Why restrict only ammonia, among all the other chemicals with dangerous and illegal uses? I don’t know; maybe it’s the most commonly stolen, or there was a rash of ammonia thefts, or who knows what.
WAG - the statute may date back to when ammonia was a common refrigerant. It would have been easily available in large quantities, but it’s toxic and explosive. Bad news all around. Thank goodness for CFCs - except for the ozone layer thing.
Maybe also because it’s easy to steal. It’s used as a refrigerant so it’s pumped, in large quantities, outside up to compressors.
The other things used in making meth that might be worth over a thousand dollars (and I’m just guessing) might get people in more trouble. That is, if the DEA is cracking down on someone and catches them stealing $1200 worth of ingredient X, they don’t need it to be grand theft since the person will already be charged with drug manufacturing. Maybe?
I wonder what the case law is on what the definition of a religious item is. For example, who must consider the object to have a religious function for the object to be a “religious item”? The victim? The thief? A recognized clergyperson? E.g. if a non-Christian steals Catholic rosaries, statues, icons, or vestments believing them to be mundane objects in fact because the religion behind them is false, is that a valid defense that would bump the grand theft minimum up to $1000?
What do you mean “the religion behind them is false”? Many people believe that Catholics believe untrue things, but I’ve never heard anyone who thought that Catholicism wasn’t actually a religion.
Well, I could up and claim that my computer is a sacred object in my religion of “robert_columbiology” in order to make any theft of it into a felonious grand theft. The question is where do you draw the line and how would a court determine whether the object is a bona fide religious object? Would you really want a judge or jury saying, “Sorry, <victim>, your religion is not recognized by this court and therefore we treat the theft of your so-called fertility statues, worth $200, as petty theft.”