People v. Fiala

The defendant, Thomas Fiala, was convicted of armed robbery following a bench trial and was sentenced to a nine-year term of imprisonment. Only one issue is raised on appeal: whether the defendant’s conviction for armed robbery should be reduced to simple robbery where the evidence presented was insufficient to establish, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant was armed during the commission of the robbery.

The evidence presented at trial revealed the following sequence of events. On June 27, 1979, at approximately 7:45 p.m., the defendant approached the service desk of a Jewel food…