A theft or larceny charge can be serious, with those accused of the crime often facing sentences of months, if not years in jail, along with fines in the thousands of dollars. There may not be any way for a lawyer to guarantee they can help you minimize or get off your charges, but they may be able to rely on some of the following larceny defense strategies.

What Is Larceny?

Before outlining possible strategies that your grand larceny lawyer may use to assist your case, it’s important to understand what larceny is. Larceny is theft, which is unlawfully taking someone else’s property without their consent and with the intent to deprive the owner of their property permanently.

To prove larceny in criminal law, you must demonstrate that the defendant meant to do all of those things above. It’s not always easy, especially if your grand larceny lawyer can create reasonable doubt.

Belief of Ownership or Right to Use

One of the many defenses your chosen lawyer may help you put forward is that you can’t commit larceny if the property you’re taking is your own or that you had the right to use or take it. Even if your belief isn’t reasonable, you may be able to prove that you had an honest belief that you could use or own something.

An example of this might be taking a car from your family home belonging to a deceased loved one. The deceased family member may have told you that you could take the car, but it now legally belongs to the next of kin. You didn’t intentionally commit theft, and you had a good-faith belief that you had the right to use or take that car.

Consent

In a few situations, your lawyer may be able to argue that the owner of the property you supposedly stole from consented to you taking it. If you can prove that to be the case, you can’t have committed larceny since one of the definitions of larceny is taking something without the owner’s permission.

Very few people will be able to use this defense, but it’s possible. An example of consent being a viable defense would be if the owner requested that you take something so that they could say it was stolen and file an insurance claim. You might be guilty of insurance fraud, but a larceny charge may no longer be relevant if this is proven. 

Duress

Sometimes, you can take something without permission, but only because someone threatened or blackmailed you into doing it. If you can prove that you had no choice but to steal, a jury may say you didn’t act voluntarily and aren’t responsible for the crime. You still committed the theft, but you may not be charged for that particular crime.

What Is the Punishment for Larceny?

The punishment for larceny in the United States can vary from one state to the next. It can also depend on the value of property stolen, the situation surrounding the theft, and the legal defense you put forward. Petit or ‘petty’ larcenies generally carry much lighter penalties than grand larceny.

No lawyer can guarantee that they’ll get their client off larceny charges, but that doesn’t mean they don’t often have defense strategies up their sleeves. Any of these defenses above might be how you lessen your larceny charges or even have them removed altogether.