On Friday’s Z107.7 Up Close Show, host Gary Daigneault spoke with Douglas Poston, the Supervising Deputy District Attorney for the Desert Division Morongo Basin Office. They discussed the recent implementation of state Proposition 36, and its impact on prosecution of criminals for retail theft. Here’s a snippet from their conversation.
“So Prop 36 was placed on the ballot. And so what exactly did that do? It undid something and started some other things.
What it allows the district attorney to do now is to aggregate petty thefts. In other words, if we have a person that goes into Walmart and then into Walgreens, Rite Aid, some other stores, and in each one of those stores steals a small amount of merchandise, but that amount when totaled up and added up reaches that $950 threshold, instead of charging them with a bunch of what really were, you know, slap-on-the-wrist misdemeanors, we can charge them with a single felony. That’s one of the biggest changes.
It allows us to aggregate them into one single felony charge.
Another change was that when a person has a prior record for committing petty theft or shoplifting, depending on the number of priors that they have, the third petty theft can actually now be charged as a felony.
Do I expect to see that in every case? No. But that’s an option.
Three petty thefts, and you do put your two prior convictions, that does create the eligibility for filing a felony.”
You can listen to their full conversation below or by subscribing to the Up Close Show as a podcast.
