3 years jail for phone theft? Absolutely, says appeals judge
Upholding lower court sentence, Supreme Court says theft of mobile phones is more serious than many other types of larceny
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Stealing cell phones should carry harsher penalties than other kinds of property theft, a ruling by the Supreme Court indicated Thursday. The court upheld a lower court’s three-year sentence for a phone thief, and explained that stealing mobile phones was more intimate and damaging than the theft of other items.
According to Justice Isaac Amit, theft of a smartphone, which has become an indispensable part of life to many Israelis, is more damaging to victims than other types of larceny.
“Cell phones today hold people’s life story — containing moments and significant memories from their lives, alongside information essential to their day-to-day functioning,” Amit wrote.
He noted that the recovery of photos, addresses, telephone numbers, calendars and notes were costly and time-consuming processes. “The stealing of a cell phone may cause the victim stress and anxiety,” he added.
Amit added that cell phone thievery constituted a severe violation of a person’s privacy, a phone being “a safe of sorts that contains photos — often sensitive ones — (as well as) personal correspondence and personal, even secret information.”
Amit’s ruling was made in the case of a convicted cell phone thief who had appealed his sentence to the Supreme Court. The man had engaged in a three-day cellphone robbery spree, in which he and an associate snatched phones from pedestrians as they drove by them.
After the pair confessed, they were convicted on four counts of aggravated robbery and conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor. The defendant was sentenced to three years in prison and one year of probation, and ordered to pay NIS 1,000 to one victim injured during one of the robberies. The accomplice, who had a prior criminal record, was sentenced to a slightly longer sentence of three-and-a-half years in prison.
The defendant had appealed the sentence, claiming that the court was being overly hard on him when compared to his associate, a convicted criminal.
Amit, along with two other justices, ruled to uphold the original sentence.
The Times of Israel Community.