Christopher Jordan Ganzel, 24, of an apartment on the 20th block of Poplar Street, was charged Aug. 21 with felony theft by unlawful taking, felony receiving stolen property and misdemeanor unauthorized use of a car, according to court documents.
Felony theft and felony receiving shouldn’t be allowed. It’s one theft that got three charges, but it’s these two in concert that really rub me the wrong way. This is why innocent people plead out.
In principle, I get the idea: that you can’t have someone else steal something for you and then get off the hook because you weren’t the one who stole it. That said, I feel like the laws should be written in a way that precludes someone being charged with both for the same offense, or in a way that delegates the fault such that “taking” and “receiving” add up to the consequences of a single theft charge.
Of course, the US is a Prison State so it’s unlikely one wasn’t added simply to pad out sentence lengths or leverage plea deals.
If you tried to introduce legislation to correct the problem you’d have DAs coming out of the woodwork saying how this would make it impossible to secure plea deals and that would be terrible because they already have too many cases to prosecute. The whole thing would be dead on arrival as a result.
Felony theft and felony receiving shouldn’t be allowed. It’s one theft that got three charges, but it’s these two in concert that really rub me the wrong way. This is why innocent people plead out.
In principle, I get the idea: that you can’t have someone else steal something for you and then get off the hook because you weren’t the one who stole it. That said, I feel like the laws should be written in a way that precludes someone being charged with both for the same offense, or in a way that delegates the fault such that “taking” and “receiving” add up to the consequences of a single theft charge.
Of course, the US is a Prison State so it’s unlikely one wasn’t added simply to pad out sentence lengths or leverage plea deals.
They usually charge people with as many things as they can and the smaller offenses get dropped (often as part of a plea deal).
If you tried to introduce legislation to correct the problem you’d have DAs coming out of the woodwork saying how this would make it impossible to secure plea deals and that would be terrible because they already have too many cases to prosecute. The whole thing would be dead on arrival as a result.