Theft is the unlawful taking of property from another person. Some more-common examples include shoplifting, pickpocketing, theft from buildings where the alleged violator has legitimate access, and purse snatching.

California law distinguishes between grand theft and petty theft. It’s generally grand theft when the property taken unlawfully is valued at more than $400. Interestingly enough, it’s also grand theft for illegally taking only more than $100 worth of certain items, including domestic fowls, fruits, vegetables, and other farm crops, along with fish, crustaceans, and other aquacultural products taken from a commercial or research facility. Grand theft also applies to a list of other property such as an automobile, a firearm, a horse, even lambs, sheep, and pigs.

Except as noted above, petty theft generally applies when the value of property unlawfully taken has a value of $100 or less. When grand theft involves the theft of a firearm, convictions can result in imprisonment in state prison for 16 months, 2, or 3 years. In all other cases, grand theft is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or in state prison. Petty theft is punishable by a fine not to exceed $1,000), or by imprisonment of up to six months in county jail, or both.

To give you an idea, by the way, of how specific the law can be, consider that “every person who shall feloniously steal, take, transport or carry the carcass of any bovine, caprine, equine, ovine, or suine animal or of any mule, jack or jenny, which is the personal property of another, or who shall fraudulently appropriate such property which has been entrusted to him, is guilty of grand theft.”

We don’t get many cases of “Grand Theft Jenny” at the Law Office of Ronald G. Brower, but we are prepared to defend any form of theft that you or a loved one may be charged with.