I know of a guy who got nailed with "armed robbery" because he stole a gun from the glove compartment of an unoccupied car that he had broken into. All a prosecutor wants to do is screw somebody as hard as possible and win the case.

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bagels 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Seems appropriate to me. Person was holding a gun while doing a robbery which greatly amplifies the danger inherent in the crime they were doing.

On the flip side, I knew someone who interrupted a car burglary and was murdered by the burglar. Imagine what might happen if someone came upon the guy you know of who was doing a robbery while holding a stolen gun?

The person you knew made a lot of choices that led to this, any of which had they not chosen to do would have led to not being an armed robber: don't do a robbery, don't steal a gun, don't do a robbery while holding a gun.

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lambertsimnel 10 hours ago | parent [-]

IANAL, but my understanding is that breaking into an unoccupied car isn't robbery (but it might be theft and/or criminal damage). Wouldn't being convicted of armed robbery without committing a robbery be a serious injustice?

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MathMonkeyMan 9 hours ago | parent [-]

He stole the gun, so it was robbery. I feel like an armed robbery is one where you bring a weapon, which makes the robbery more dangerous. This guy was looking for cash and found a gun, so "armed robbery." The comment above claiming that the charge is justified does make sense, but I disagree with it. I'm also not a lawyer.

	▲	lambertsimnel 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What I mean is that if no victim was present there couldn't have been the violence or threat of violence necessary to turn the theft/larceny into robbery:[0] > Robbery, in turn, was simply a "compound" form of larceny. For Blackstone, "compound larciny is such as has all the properties of former, but is accompanied with one of, or both, the aggravations of a taking from one's house or person," id. at *240, and "[l]arciny from the person is either privately stealing; or by open and violent assault, which is usually called robbery," I'm not really making a judgement about the rights and wrongs of the actual case (because I'm not only not a lawyer, but also not a witness, juror, etc.), but as described it doesn't sound like robbery at all. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060903163713/http://docket.med...