This is not de minimis, although that is, in fact, a real legal thing. If she had grabbed hold of the sign and creased it, without removing it from the grasp of the victim, for example, a good argument could be made for de minimis. But in this case, while the overall harm is small, the robbery statute does not have a value element, and all the elements are met. Technically, this is prosecutable as felony robbery.
There are no real guidelines on the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Typically, prosecutors are answerable to the electorate, but apart from that, there are few situations in which a prosecutor can be told, “Don’t exercise your discretion in that particular way.”
The only term for not prosecuting someone who has technically committed a crime – or, as in this case, choosing to prosecute as a misdemeanor instead of the technically-possible felony – is the one you identified: c’mon. Or “common sense,” perhaps. Seldom do prosecutors charge crimes when the public would collectively say, “What the hell are you doing?” (It’s much more often the case that in response to public pressure, prosecutors charge crimes even though the actual evidence, or chance of conviction, is virtually non-existent.)
In other words, prosecutors are generally responsive to public pressure, and charging a crazy professor with a felony for grabbing a sign is simply disproportionate. I am in favor of a misdemeanor prosecution, but even then the punishment should include fine and community service, with a deferred sentence so that successful completion gives her a clean criminal record. But that’s just my view – a more stringent prosecutor might insist on a finding of criminal guilt and still be inside the bounds of common sense.
But prosecutors are supposed to be more than simply automaton advocates for conviction. They are vested with discretion because we, as a society, want then to use discretion.
Charging a felony, even as a bargaining point, is (in my opinion) unfairly coercive. It raises the spectre of plea entered into simply to avoid the horrendous consequences of a felony criminal conviction. When there is no good-faith intent to proceed to prosecution of the crime, in my opinion it’s simply browbeating a plea to charge the felony.
Wait a moment…didn’t the prof also attack the owner of the sign? Why are folks focusing on just the taking of the sign? I’d think that an attack on a person is a bit more serious than a robbery.
I want a case that’s comparable to this one. As your own link indicates, the case you suggest is analogous is actually totally unrelated except that it involves signs.
But don’t you understand? Our friend magellan01really, truly, honest-to-god, pinky-swear, cross-his-heart wasn’t taking a swipe at liberals in general. He would *never *suggest that liberals are all like this. Not him; no sirree.
What was so threatening about the soup chef in a couple of Seinfeld episodes that warranted a comparison to The Nation Socialist German Workers’ Party?
To put her “robbery” in perspective, imagine if instead she’d called the woman an ugly name (Gertrude, for example) and punched her in the nose, causing a nosebleed. In my incredible level of expertise derived from about 90 seconds of googling and statute-skimming, that sounds to me like simple battery under California law, a misdemeanor. Do we really think that grabbing a sign is a much worse crime than causing a bloody nose?
Because maybe technically according to statute it is, but I refer to the legal precedent of c’mon.
Well, that’s just peachy, then, isn’t it? Steal something from someone and that someone has the gumption to prevent you fleeing, you get to physically attack that someone. That can’t be right.
On a different note, I’m curious what’s going on with the students who assisted the robber/assailant/professor. Is there as much outrage against them also?
I did a little searching for RNATB’s benefit and I couldn’t find anything like this from the liberal OF the conservative perspective.
Who the hell does this sort of thing? Lots of cases of lawn signs be stolen, none of people forcibly taking signs away from protesters they disagree with.
This is so out of bounds that the Tea Partiers don’t even pull this shit.
There are a lot of social lessons to be learned from the web traffic at porn sites. If you could get any sort of accurate information about the demographics of the viewers, I suspect that it would be even more revealing.
Its the one place where slurs and epithets are not only commonplace, people pay extra for them. One thing we have definitely learned is that every woman from the geriatric to the morbidly obese is someone’s fantasy.
I’m going to guess it happens less to upstanding members of society than to poor people.
Well, at first all you asked for was sign stealing + arrest. I don’t think this sort of thing happens but if it did, it would warrant an arrest if even stealing lawn signs warrant arrest.
2 years, it was a call for a 2 year sentence because thats the MINIMUM sentence for robbery in California, if the minimum sentence was a year, I would have called for a year. I also wasn’t insisting that she serve 2 years in prison. She would have a parole hearing before the first year was out, she might even get a parole hearing immediately following trial if the judge didn’t suspend the sentence and put her on probation.
I do think she should spend some time in jail if even for a night or weekend.
Yeah, they’re jerks too, but since college students frequently behave like idiots, they are granted some leeway. The professor should have known better.
Not nearly as much outrage against them, its easy to think its OK when it comports with your instincts and your fucking professor is telling you to do it. This is yet another reason why the professor should be fired.
Although at least one of the students seems scared. I’m not sure exactly how it works but if its not a pre-planned conspiracy and one person commits robbery, is everyone that handles the sign after the robbery also guilty of robbery if the victiim is present? They did not use force or actually take anything from someone else’s possession. But their involvement doesn’t piss me off nearly as much as what the professor did and how she responded to the police.
Dr. Mireille Miller-Young is black. magellan01 insists it’s possible that black people are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent than white people, but he thinks she’s being uncivil. Way to rock the irony, magellan01.
Well, again technically, a bloody nose can be a “serious bodily injury,” and legally supports a felony charge. As we learn from People v. Edwards:
Absent any other consequences, I’d be shocked to find a prosecutor charging that conduct as a felony. But again technically speaking, punching someone in the face and causing a bloody nose does seem to rise, legally, to the level of a felony in California.
I welcome correction on this analysis from anyone actually licensed in California, of course.
That’s what happens when you copy/paste.