Legal Question in Criminal Law in Oklahoma

I was arrested for grand larceny and I am facing a felony. My court date is in feb 2013. Now this is my story. I went grocery shopping at wal mart with my mom and her friend. I had walked out the door alone when finished and loaded grociers into my vehicle. My mom and her friend weren't shortly after me. A clerk was outside smoking and had realized some of the stuff wasn't in bags. She then came and questioned us there was an admittance of stolen grocerys. By this time the assistant manager was there as well they unloaded my whole trunk and took everything inside (3 shopping carts). They put us in a separate room, rang all items up on one ticket and then we were arrested and escorted out. They say it was over $1000 (again only groceries) so they charged us 3 with all of it under grand larceny. My questions are: can they arrest us if we were outside the store? And how can they charge us all with everything when we each had separate items and didn't even walk out together?


Asked on 9/05/12, 2:20 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
James Watzke James Watzke Attorney at Law PLLC

The state can charge all 3 of you together if they can prove you participated in the same act or transaction which constitutes an offense. So if the state feels that they can prove you all were acting together in the shoplifting you can be charged together. They also can arrest you outside of the store. In proving a case of shoplifting the state has to prove that the suspect(s) passed the last possible point of purchase with the merchandise before making an arrest, so usually shoplfting arrests are made when the suspect has passed all of the cash registers and is heading outside.

If some of the groceries were paid for you cannot be charged for stealing those so the items that were paid for should not be included in the amount of the alleged larceny. If you can prove that the stolen merchandise was valued at less than $500 then the charge should be a misdememanor petit larceny (unless any of you have previous larceny convictions)

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Answered on 9/05/12, 3:12 pm


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