Maybe I missed it, but no one has mentioned that it has been 30 days since this phone was lost. In most jurisdictions 30 days is the magic number for lost property, after which it can be dealt with.
I think the timing of this breaking when it did might have everything to do with waiting to be in the legal clear, as it happened just when the 30 days was up.
Not sure that is how it works. The length of time varies, and there are some caveats for them. Some places you have to make an effort to find the owner, or in a lot of places, the police would have to maintain custody of it, and if not claimed after a certain period of time it would be turned back to the finder.
No place that I know of in the US do you just take someone else's property from a restaurant/bar/business/store and keep it, and get to keep it and then just say, oh well must be mine now since nobody tracked me down.
There are only 3 legal things he could have done with the phone, and only two legal outcomes.
He could have turned the phone over to the place he found it.
He could have turned the phone into the local police.
He could have tried to contact the person who lost the phone, but failing to do that, then would have to do one of the above two things.
There is no legal outcome where he just takes the phone and keeps it, that I know of, not even if he hires a skywriter and sets up a web page.
Okay, notwithstanding the Federal realm, the relevant California Penal Code sections are:
487PC - Grand Theft. However, we are missing the required criminal element of INTENT. Grand Theft is not a general intent crime, it is a specific intent crime.
496 PC - Receiving Stolen Property. This is the more applicable section to pursue criminal prosecution.
FWIW.
His intent was he clear. He intended to steal a phone and keep it or sell it. At some point he figured out it was more valuable then he even thought. His intent is pretty clear.
When he took the item out of the place where he found it and never turned it in to the police, he had proven his intent was to steal it. Leaving with the phone is probably enough intent. Leaving with it and never contacting the police means you had no other intent but to have stolen it.
He saw the phone and said to himself, hmm, I should take it because someone left it there.
Sounds like intent to me. If he went to the manager of the bar and they refused to take it from him, that would show he did not intend to steal it. Anything else shows his intent to steal it.
No reasonable person would assume the best way to find the lost owner of an item would be to remove it from the place it was lost. It would be different if it were found in a public space but it was not. It was find in a bar. Thus anything short of turning it into the bar is intent to steal. For all he knew it was someone who worked at the bar.
I would say you would have to have a pretty dumb jury and/or judge to claim his intent was not to steal this item.
Why? Because it's logical and makes sense. End of story.
