Felony petty theft is the colloquial term for a statute in the California Penal Code (Section 666) that makes it possible for a person who commits the crime of petty theft to be charged with a felony rather than a misdemeanor if the accused had previously been convicted of a theft-related crime at any time in the past. The technical name for the charge is petty theft with a prior.
Though this law has been on the books in California since 1872, its existence took on new importance after the state's voters approved a three strikes law in a 1994 referendum, when it appeared on the ballot as Proposition 184. In certain cases, a person with two prior felony convictions has been charged with a third felony for committing a minor shoplifting crime. If one of the two previous felony charges had involved stealing in any manner then the shoplifting conviction, thus upgraded to a felony, would result in a mandatory sentence of 25 years to life in prison under the three-strikes law.
This scenario has aroused harsh criticism, not only throughout the United States, but also globally; several court challenges to its inclusion in the three-strikes law were pending as of 2004, but a ballot measure that would have eliminated it, known as Proposition 66, was rejected by California voters on November 2, 2004; the measure was opposed by most law-enforcement unions in the state, and also by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The main complaint with Proposition 66 was that it would retroactively resentence all offenders convicted of third strike offenses, allowing violent criminals (who had served sentences for their previous crimes) to be released.
Texas, Washington, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, Nevada, North Dakota, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin, Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arizona have also enacted Three Strikes laws for habitual offenders, making petty larceny a felony if there have been prior convictions.
Famous quotes containing the words felony, petty and/or theft:
“Publishers are notoriously slothful about numbers, unless they’re attached to dollar signs—unlike journalists, quarterbacks, and felony criminal defendents who tend to be keenly aware of numbers at all times.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“The Sage of Toronto ... spent several decades marveling at the numerous freedoms created by a “global village” instantly and effortlessly accessible to all. Villages, unlike towns, have always been ruled by conformism, isolation, petty surveillance, boredom and repetitive malicious gossip about the same families. Which is a precise enough description of the global spectacle’s present vulgarity.”
—Guy Debord (b. 1931)
“Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men’s preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men’s wills such as men would have them.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)