State v. Wells

The record in this case sets forth the standard operating procedures that mark the mugging-type robbery.

There is the selection of the victim. Senior citizens, particularly those living alone and suffering the infirmities of advancing years, are preferred targets. Here the victim, Frederick Gens, was an eighty-one-year-old man, living alone in a rented room.

There is the selection of the time and place. By advance surveillance or “stakeout,” a time and place are selected when it is predictable that the victim will be *482alone. Here the time of the assault was 9:80 a. m., on a Sunday morning; the…