Talk:Receipt of stolen property
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 | The contents of the Receipt of stolen property page were merged into Possession of stolen goods on 2011-03-29 and it now redirects there. For the contribution history and old versions of the merged article please see its history. |
I'm a police officer and would suggest all to take a look at Juststolen.net, it's pretty amazing.
That struck me as odd
[edit]Although I can't say I'm surprised, per se: Also, in many states (Ohio, for example), the burden to prove criminal intent is not as stringent or is nonexistent. This means that one can be charged with the crime - usually a minor degree of felony - even if the person did not know the item in question was stolen.. What's the reasoning behind this? Short-sightededness while writing the actual laws, or is this usually a conscious decision on the legislators' part in states like this? I knew a guy a few years ago who was almost nabbed in a sting operation, when undercover police offered him stereo equipment for a reasonable price (he got suspicious and declined midway during the negotiations); he later saw them an hour later arresting another person. That's even worse -- if undercover police are "selling" it, then is it really even stolen? --I am not good at running 17:37, 20 September 2005 (UTC)
- I added a link to an Ohio court decision (State v. Awad) where they ruled that even though the goods were not stolen, the undercover police officer said it was stolen, and that made it sufficient to convict. From the summary: Under R.C. 2913.51(B), it is not a defense to a charge of receiving stolen property that the property was not, in fact, stolen, but was used by police in a sting operation, when the property was explicitly represented to the accused as being stolen. In a prosecution for receiving stolen property in violation of R.C. 2913.51, the trial court reasonably could have found that an undercover officer’s use of the word "steal" was part of an explicit representation that the property in question was stolen. Tangurena (talk) 21:34, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
I think the case is cited misleadingly in the article to seem to support the assertion that criminal intent is not necessary. First, the Ohio statute explicitly makes it a crime to receive property that you think is stolen, even if it isn't; second, the intent element is provided by the "knowingly" or "reason to believe" language. In Awad, the undercover agent used the word "steal" twice in explaining how he had the cigarrettes that he sold to Awad. SHJohnson (talk) 19:33, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
I added the material on 'reset' as I came across what was to me an oddly worded passage on bbc news Without resetters, there would be no commercial stealing. The links to reset (scot law) were all red, so I had to do some digging myself just to find out it was the same thing as receiving stolen property, and probably "reset" is just the way that "receipt" was pronounced 200 some odd years ago. Tangurena (talk) 21:34, 16 April 2009 (UTC)