Larceny

Larceny is the felonious taking and carrying away of someone else's personal property, without his consent, with the intention of permanently depriving him of its use or possession. There are several necessary parts to this offense, which is a felony or a misdemeanor, depending on the value of the property stolen.

In defining larceny, the word felonious means fraudulent; felonious larceny is a taking with intent to steal.

Both a taking and a carrying away are essential. By going into your neighbor's garage without his knowledge or consent and laying your hands on the lawn mower, you have taken it, that is, you have established your (unlawful) possession of it. But there's no larceny until you remove the mower to your property, intending never to return it.

The property taken need only have been in the possession of someone else. If you and your neighbor are having a genuine dispute over who owns the lawn mower, and in entering his garage at night and removing the mower to your property, you think you are merely getting back what is yours, you are nevertheless guilty of the offense of larceny. The crime is directed against possession, not legal title or technical ownership.

Larceny is directed only against personal property. If you chop down a tree on someone else's property, you have not committed larceny. But if you're walking along the road and see a pile of logs in a field and you take a few home for your fireplace, you would be guilty of larceny.

Abandoned property is not the subject of larceny, but lost property is.

Making the distinction between something that has been abandoned and something that has been lost is not always easy. The law in this area starts from the assumption that a person who abandons something does not really intend to recover it, whereas the person who loses or misplaces something does hope to recover it. The owner of abandoned property has discarded his ownership; the owner of lost property has not.

You may not legally take the package as yours. It is regarded not as abandoned, but only as lost or mislaid. Railroad companies operate lost-and-found departments to which their employees refer such packages, so that careless passengers know where to go when they realize they have mislaid them. Lost-and-found items are usually held by the railroad for a certain period of time, then sold at auction.

Larceny may also result from a mistake, depending on the facts. Intent is the controlling factor. Let's say you order a raincoat from a store and pay cash for it but ask to have it sent to you. When the package arrives, you find that what has been delivered is a much more expensive coat. You have an obligation to return what was obviously sent you by mistake. Failure to return it would be larceny, because when you discovered the mistake, you intended to take and to keep something that was not yours.

The difference between grand larceny and petty larceny depends only on the value of what has been stolen. The practical significance is that grand larceny is a felony and petty larceny is only a misdemeanor.

PARTIES TO CRIMES: PRINCIPALS, ACCESSORIES AND ACCOMPLICES

Those who actually commit or perpetrate the crime, whether a felony or a misdemeanor, are called principals.

Accessories before the fact are those who, although absent when the act was committed, nevertheless participated in it by procuring, counseling or ordering the principal to commit the act. Accessories before the fact are now commonly regarded as principals. Because the law doesn't try to distinguish among those involved in the relatively minor offenses called misdemeanors, there are no accessories to misdemeanors.

Accessories after the fact are those who, knowing a crime has been committed, assist the principal to avoid capture or arrest, or arrange an escape. But if the crime is treason, all involved are treated as principals, because of the seriousness of the offense.

An accomplice is a person who knowingly and willingly participates in the commission of a crime, whether a felony or a misdemeanor. If a person can be charged and convicted of the same offense as that charged against the principal offender, he is an accomplice. For example, suppose two people rob a bank, one of them standing outside the bank to warn the other of passersby, then driving the getaway car after the other has pocketed the money. The driver is an accomplice and can be charged and convicted of the crime of robbery just as readily as the one who actually took the money.

If, however, the one who took the money shoots and kills the bank's armed guard, the driver cannot be charged and convicted of the crime of murder; he is an accomplice only to the crime in which he participated.