Theft at 30,000 feet may go unpunished
February 8th, 2012
A passenger on a commercial flight from Arizona to Florida allegedly stole $500 from another passenger’s purse. Now it appears that the alleged thief’s arrest in Florida will come to naught because of a problem with jurisdiction.
The lucky criminal defendant, Stacy Sanders, took a commercial flight from Phoenix, Arizona to Fort Lauderdale, Florida on June 25, 2009. Sometime before the flight entered Florida airspace, Sanders allegedly stole $500 from a fellow passenger’s purse.
According to prosecutors, an alert flight attendant caught Sanders in the act and forced her to return the money.
Of course, Sanders couldn’t just return the money and call it even-steven. When the plane landed in Florida, deputies from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office were there to greet her. The good deputies arrested Sanders and she was later charged with grand theft.
Sanders’ lawyer, Richard L. Rosenbaum of Arnstein & Lehr in Fort Lauderdale, argued that Florida lacked jurisdiction to prosecute the matter because all of the acts relating to the charge occurred outside the state.
The trial court denied the motion to dismiss. The court concluded that the charge against Sanders fell within the scope of Florida’s criminal jurisdiction statute (Florida Statutes §910.005) because her actions constituted an attempt to commit grand theft within Florida.
Apparently, the trial judge gave credence to the state’s view that Sanders would have had to leave the plane with the victim’s money after the plane landed in Florida in order to complete the crime.
Late last month, a Florida appeals court concluded that Rosenbaum had the much better argument:
It is apparent that Sanders allegedly committed all of the elements of theft prior to the plane’s entering Florida’s territory. When Sanders took physical possession of the victim’s money, she would no longer be “endeavor[ing] to obtain” the victim’s property because she would have already obtained the victim’s property with the intent to permanently deprive her of it. This means that the theft was fully executed before the plane reached Florida. Sanders could not be “endeavor[ing] to obtain” the victim’s property because she already had done so. Thus, the theft was not “committed wholly or partly within” Florida, so paragraph (a) of subsection 910.005(1) does not apply. Further, because the crime was completed the moment she obtained the victim’s money with the intent to deprive her of it permanently, Sanders’s actions on the plane could not “constitute[] a n attempt to commit an offense within” Florida under 910.005(1)(b).
Accordingly, the court of appeals remanded the matter with instructions that the trial court dismiss the grand theft charge against Sanders. So for now it looks as though Sanders walks away scot-free. We can only hope that she’ll keep her hands to herself on upcoming flights.
– Pat Murphy









