In Les Misérables, the protagonist Jean Valjean is famously sentenced to five years’ imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread. In real life, what’s the least valuable property whose theft led to a successful prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment? For instance, has anyone served time for stealing less than a dollar (or something worth less than a dollar)?
My question’s meant to address simple theft where there’s no use or threat of violence (such as armed robbery), nor any property damage (such as breaking into a bank), since these things can often be considered crimes in their own right even when no theft is involved.
To start, how about a life sentence for $2.50 worth of socks.
Curtis Wilkerson had two prior felonies, dating to 1981. 14 years later, with no intervening legal problems, he shoplifted a $2.50 pair of socks. He was convicted and per California’s 3-strikes rule, sentenced to life in prison. Rolling Stone article
(ninja’d while writing a synopsis!)
This isn’t a theft case,so it’s a little off topic…But it’s an example of the same kind of overkill :
A sex case…in which a woman gets a life sentence for letting a 13 year old boy touch her breast. 8-minute youtube clip from the courtroom
Mary Wade, one of Australia’s founding mothers. Sentenced to death by hanging for stealing a frock, a tippet and a cap when she was 11 years old in 1789. Sentence commuted to penal transportation to Australia.
Unless you specify ‘adjusted for inflation’, the winners are all going to be from long ago, when stealing a couple penniesworth of something meant stealing half a day’s wages.
One of Jane Austen’s aunts was arrested for shoplifting a card of white lace. She spent several months in prison and could have been hanged or transported but was saved from those fates by her standing as a gentlewoman.
There was a case in Minneapolis some years ago where a successfully-prosecuted case of someone shoplifting a package of hamburger cost the presiding Judge his job!
An elderly lady, a concentration camp survivor, was caught trying to shoplift a package of hamburger. I don’t think she was sentenced to any jail time except that already spent in jail, but when the judge was admonishing her in court, among other things he said ‘you should have learned respect for law and order in the camp’.
That got a lot of comment around here. And people, especially the Jewish and GLBT communities, started raising money for ‘whoever runs against him’ at the next Judicial election. But when that came, in a couple of years, he decided not to run for re-election.
Except, the sentence was not just for stealing socks, it wa also for having committed several other serious felonies. Mind you, the 14 years later thing should have made the prosecutor not charge him with a felony.
I was in college in the late 70’s and there were lots and lots of Iranian students. This was at UT Austin where the average Texan was still trying to get used to having black Americans in the classroom, and Iranians were not widely liked. Then came the Iranian Revolution and the great big hostage crisis so they were really unpopular around town, then the far seeing Jimmy Carter ordered all Iranian students to register their whereabouts with the Govmint, kinda like the Jews had to in Germany…anyway, I know of no way to find out if this guy was convicted, but an Iranian student was contemplating the grapes in the vegetable aisle at the HEB grocery and tasted one to decide if he wanted to buy a bunch. He was arrested and jailed for shoplifting. Lucky for him it was before Cheney revived that old WW2 P.O.W. torture we executed Japanese prison guards for called water boarding. There was no outcry over this. I don’t think you could buy one grape at that time because it’s value was less than one cent so this case is as low as you can go.
I was thinking I’d heard about a German guy arrested for theft of EUR0.02 worth of electricity when he charged his mobile phone at an outlet in a train station, but I can’t find a news story. But I found asimilar story about a homeless guy in Sarasota, Fla.