She’s been convicted, but she’ll get probation. And that’s all the crime deserves.
It’s shoplifting. The fact that the clothes she stole were worth over five grand is a technicality. It was an expensive store for rich people where everything is at least ten time more expensive than it should be.
It’s not like she stole $5000 cash from a bank.
But she also now has a felony conviction on her record and I think, jail or not, she deserves that.
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I’ll go along with that.
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I suppose it can vary from state to state, but isn’t it always a technicality that seperates larceny from grand larceny?
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I’m not really sure why any of this matters. Perhaps you could enlighten us?
If stealing 5,000 in clothes from a high priced store is just shoplifting why do you think she deserves the felony conviction on her record. I’m confused.
Marc
It varies state to state, but that’s felony grand theft in CA. She still got convicted of that, though the burglary was dropped. By definition, a felony is a crime for which punishment includes over 1 year of jail time.
IMHO, they should give her the full year of incarceration, or whatever term it happens to be. These celebrities think they can do anything and get a slap on the wrist. What has she done to deserve special treatment in sentencing? If an urban youth (wink wink) had done this, you can bet he’d be spending his next Christmas in jail. They have found her guilty of the felony, they can’t bring it down to a misdemeanor now. The prosecutor can make sentencing recommendations, but the judge is under no obligation to follow that. So Judge RexDart hereby sentences the defendant to 12 months incarceration, to be served at a state penal institution. Let’s hope, for her sake, that she doesn’t have to watch any of her crummy movies while she’s in there. The judge has spoken!
OK then, so it is not really wrong to steal $10,000 worth of goods from a shop, because it’s an expensive store for rich people.
Banks make huge profits, and charge extortionate service fees - why isn’t it justifiable to steal $5000 cash from them?
I have a close friend who works at Neiman Marcus very close to the Saks where Ryder was caught. According to her, it is common knowledge that Winona was a habitual shoplifter. Saks just got sick of it.
According to SF Gate, the prosecution isn’t seeking jail time:
I sorta think she needs psychiatric help more than jail time.
I doubt she was lacking the money to buy the stuff she wanted.
I don’t pretend to know the law or the typical punishment for these violations, but believe she should get whatever is normal.
If it’s just a fine or probation or a long prison sentence, let it be. Her status as a movie star should have nothing to due with.
I wonder how much Ms. Rider’s lawyer charged her? I’ll bet her legal bills were over $5,000! Why doesn’t she admit that she has a problem-and instead of getting a high-priced lawyer to argue idiotic technicalities for her(“I was just educating myself for an upcoming role as a shoplifter, your Honor”), admit her guilt and pay a fine!
These Hollywood “celebrities” never cease to amaze me!
The value of the items stolen was a question of fact for the jury to resolve.
If I open Bricker’s All-Nude Revue and Motorcycle Parts Store, and put our metric wrenches priced at $5,000 each, that doesn’t make their theft into a felony. But it would mean that the accused would have to bring in some sort of testimony to show that the price I was charging was without basis in the rest of the retail world.
The jury would then have to decide on what the real value of the wrenches was.
The whole “just researching a movie role” shows that she has no remorse, and I think she should do at least a week over this.
Felony grand theft is felony grand theft is felony grand theft.
Horse Hockey. If your “urban youth” (and you can stick your implication with the wink wink), did this, and was in the same situation as Winona is, they’d get the same punishment. No priors, no lack of money to pay restitution, and a history of some mental illness, they’d end up with probation too.
I don’t even own a motorcycle and I’m going to Bricker’s store.
foxyboxer:
I didn’t say it wasn’t wrong. I said that, morally and ethically, it wasn’t a felony. It was still just shoplifting.
Check out what actor John Cusack did:
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The New York Post recently reported that the actor is fond of a practice he calls “celebrity looting.” In an interview with Black Book magazine, he explained what the activity entails.
Cusack pointed out a clothing store to the interviewer and said, “We did celebrity looting there. … They asked me to come over, patronize the store, pick up some stuff. So I took all my friends over, and we went straight for the $8,000 rack of leather coats and took a bunch. The managers, they get all nervous and twitchy. They freak. But you just look at 'em really hard and walk out. That’s celebrity looting.”
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Now, IMO, that’s felony larceny.
Celebrity Looting??!! The next reality TV Show 
I’m not quite sure how you figure something is, or is not, “morally” a felony. If one state has a law that puts theft of over $250 as a felony, and another’s law says it over $200 that’s the felony, I suppose you could argue that there’s some sort of moral gray area when someone steals goods valued at $225. After all, you might say, this theft was a felony here, but had it happened across the state line, it would only be a misdemeanor!
Still, people are responsible for knowing the law. I say a “moral” felony occurs when you commit a crime that’s a felony in the jurisdiction you’re in.
In any event, I don’t think any state calls theft of $3000 worth of goods a misdemeanor.
So as long as I’m stealing items from a store, it doesn’t matter how much they’re worth, it’s still “just” shoplifting? What if I clean out the place? What if it’s $20,000 worth of stuff, is it still a misdemeanor? Or do we take into account the financial situation of the store’s owner; if it’s Saks, anything under $10,000 is OK, but if it’s a single mom’s struggling enterprise you can’t have more than $200 worth?
I don’t know whether or not Ms. Ryder stole $5000 in goods, but I do know a few things:
She did not get a fair trial, whether she’s guilty or not. The prosecution engaged in blatantly dishonest activities in order to paint her as a ritualistically shoplifting, drug-popping vandal whose crimes were all caught very blatantly on videotape. Then it turns out “whoops, the ‘drugs’ she was caught with were just two pills of the generic version of some medication she has a prescription for”, yet still the prosecution was reluctant to drop the charges. Then it’s, “Whoops, the video tape we claimed we had that showed her commiting the vile deeds seems to have a problem in that it doesn’t, technically, exist”. By the time the jury was selected, it was “common knowledge” that she was guilty. The behavior of the prosecution was bullshit of the highest order.
If she was anybody else, the case would likely never have gone to trial, and certainly wouldn’t have been treated with such severity. Saks didn’t even want to prosecute - they didn’t want the publicity. That’s why the DA pushed for felony charges - under law, Saks could only choose to waive prosecution if the crime was a misdemeanor. The DA was overzealous, due to a perception that they’re soft on celebrity crime. What to do when the public sees you letting celebrities accused of serious crimes walk free? Why, go off the deep end in prosecuting some minor offense, of course. Makes sense to me.
I think this will be a continuing trend. Some hip-hopper is accused of shooting someone, and gets let off. An actor is caught going over the speed limit, and gets dragged into court for driving recklessly under the influence of Tylenol and forgetting to signal.
I agree that celebrities should not be given special treatment, but this also means they should not be dealt with especially harshly. Innocent or guilty, I think it’s pretty clear that Wynona’s status played a heavy role in her prosecution, and that’s just not right.
Jeff
Now THAT assertion is a Great Debate
The prosecution presented the evidence to the jury. That’s not dishonest, it’s the truth.
Horse Hockey. It was defense that fought against letting the prosecution dismiss the drug charges. The prosecution waited to get all the evidence, including her prescription, and the lab test, and then moved to dismiss the charges on their own.
The videotape exists. Taken as a whole, it showed her shoplifting. It came into evidence and the jury saw it. What more do you want?
No, what is bullshit of the highest order is you shooting off your mouth about stuff you have no idea about. The prosecution did their job legally and morally and acted with honor and to have somebody like you come in and throw slime around doesn’t make it untrue.
The defense didn’t agree to the offer made by the State, nor the offer made by the judge. Thats why it went to trial. And what severity? As soon as the verdict came back, the prosecution said they wouldn’t seek any amount of jailtime.
It’s not their call. The amount of publicity shouldn’t effect whether a criminal prosecution is sought.
The DA didn’t push for felony charges, she was charged with what she did. And in all my years, I’ve never NEVER NEVER heard of a law that is anything remotely like what you say it is. And they weren’t overzealous, they prosecuted somebody who committed a crime. That’s their job, and they did it well and with honor.
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Are you seriously trying to intimate that Ryder was framed? Or do you think that people shouldn’t be charged with the crime they committed?
Ummmmmm. OK???
Horse Hockey again. She committed a crime and was prosecuted. At no point was she treated “harshly”. She was admitted to bail, given a fair trial, and convicted by 12 people who looked at all the evidence. And she won’t serve a day in jail. What the heck is harsh about that?
Do you have a Cite for that? b/c according to my friend who works for Neiman’s, (see my above post), Saks was very much involved in making sure she was prosecuted b/c they were sick of her doing it.
Besides, why wouldn’t they want the publicity? I can’t think of a reason why Saks would want to be perceived as an upscale store granting special priviledge to the famous. I would imagine most of their clientele would be pretty offended that celebrities get better treatment than they do, since they can afford the same merchandise and are generally underwhelmed by celebrities anyway. (Especially those who shop at the Saks on Wilshire Blvd).
Um, as a sales manager for the third largest department store chain in the country (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which Arkansas based retail establishment I work for 
), I can assure you that, had this been someone from inner city Toledo, with one tenth the amount of goods Ms. Rider was discovered to be in the possession of, my company would be quite happy to help prosecute. Indeed, I’ve testified in cases involving as little as $200 in goods. My company aggressively pursues charges and convictions with the co-operation of local police departments (whether this is good policy or not is not the point; the point is that Ms. Rider wasn’t getting some sort of special treatment by being prosecuted, other than for once the fact that she was rich and famous didn’t serve to get her out of facing what she deserved).
I disagree. If she were anybody else…
Heck, if it were me, I’d be doing jail time already. The Los Angeles DA never looks at a $5000.00 theft as ‘merely shoplifting’.
IMO, she should do 6 months in county.