People v. Bradford

Opinion

NEEDHAM, J.

A defendant shoplifts property from a store in a shopping mall and forcibly resists the mall security guards who apprehend him and recover the property. Can the guards be victims of a robbery when they are not the owners of the stolen property and are not directly employed by the store that owned the property? We conclude the answer in this case is yes, because the guards had a special relationship with the store and had the duty and authority to retrieve its stolen property. We also reject defendant’s claims that the jury instructions on this point were defective and that…