People v. Gordon

Chief Judge Lippman

(dissenting in part). A defendant not found in possession of stolen property may be convicted of robbery on a theory of forcible retention, but only upon proof, direct or circumstantial, to justify the inference that, at the time of her resort to force, she retained what she stole. Proof of actual possession contemporaneous with the use of force to perfect the *654taking is not, as the majority suggests (majority op at 651), dispensable to a robbery conviction.

The Appellate Division may have spoken with less than optimal precision when it said in substance that because…