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GRAND LARCENY CONVICTION REDUCED TO PETIT LARCENY, PROOF OF VALUE OF STOLEN PROPERTY INSUFFICIENT.

The Fourth Department, in the interest of justice, reduced defendant's grand larceny to petit larceny because of insufficient proof of the value of the stolen property:

The value of stolen property is “the market value of the property at the time and place of the crime, or if such cannot be satisfactorily ascertained, the cost of replacement of the property within a reasonable time after the crime” (Penal Law § 155.20 [1]). It is well settled that “a victim must provide a basis of knowledge for his [or her] statement of value before it can be accepted as legally sufficient evidence of such value” … . Furthermore, “[c]onclusory statements and rough estimates of value are not sufficient” to establish the value of the property … . “Although a victim is competent to supply evidence of original cost' . . . , evidence of the original purchase price, without more, will not satisfy the People's burden' ” … .

Here, the victim testified that several specific items were taken, but the only evidence of the value of those items was the victim's testimony regarding the purchase price of some of them, and her hearsay testimony regarding a purported expert's appraisal of some of the property, which was based solely on her description of certain jewelry to the purported expert. Based on the evidence of value in the record, we cannot conclude “that the jury ha[d] a reasonable basis for inferring, rather than speculating, that the value of the property exceeded the statutory threshold” of $3,000 … . People v Slack, 2016 NY Slip Op 01930, 4th Dept 3-18-16

CRIMINAL LAW (GRAND LARCENY CONVICTION REDUCED TO PETIT LARCENY, PROOF OF VALUE INSUFFICIENT)/EVIDENCE (GRAND LARCENY CONVICTION REDUCED TO PETIT LARCENY, PROOF OF VALUE INSUFFICIENT)/GRAND LARCENY (GRAND LARCENY CONVICTION REDUCED TO PETIT LARCENY, PROOF OF VALUE INSUFFICIENT)

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