Full Court Affirms Panel Decision
On February 17, 2009, the Court of Appeals of Virginia sitting en banc affirmed a prior ruling by a three judge panel ruling that a purse is not a burglarious tool. This case was argued by Horace F. Hunter of the law firm of Hunter & Lipton LLP and the case garnered much attention by the legal community because the ruling would have lasting affects on how larceny prosecutions would be carried out in the future.
The case arose out of the Chesterfield County Circuit Court where the trial judges consistently ruled that a bag of any type used during the commission of a larceny constituted a burglarious tool as burglarious tools are defined by the statute. The problem was that everyone in the legal community generally agreed that that was not the purpose of the statute. The statute makes possession of burglarious tools a felony and it did not seem logical to anyone that someone who stole a $.05 stick of bubble gum and placed it in a purse committed a felony while another person who stole that same stick of bubble gum and placed in their pants pocket was committing a misdemeanor. There was some speculation among members of the criminal defense bar that the major department stores in Chesterfield and Henrico County were behind the push to prosecute petty shoplifters as felons but that has never been proven.
This issue was finally decided however by the Virginia Court of Appeals when they said definitively that a purse was not a burglarious tool. They traced the history of the statute as well as other appellate court decisions and held that it was ludicrous to believe that the intent of the statute could have ever been to criminalize the conduct presented in this case. The Court further went on to describe the absurd results that would follow if they were to carry the Commonwealth’s argument to its natural conclusions.
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