Commonwealth v. Smith

LAMBERT, Chief Justice.

An essential element of first degree robbery is that the accused must be in the course of committing a theft. At trial, evidence was presented that Billy Ray Smith, Appellee herein, held a gun on the victim and threatened him while Smith’s cohort searched the victim’s pockets for cash. Was this evidence against Smith sufficient to show that Smith was in the course of committing a theft and thus sufficient to sustain a conviction of first degree robbery?

The facts are as follows. The victim, Cleon Sumner, was a 50-year old mentally disabled man who was known in Perry…