Robbery Criminal Charges in Arizona under A.R.S. 13-1902

There are some specific elements that are required in order for a person to have been considered to have committed conduct that amounts to robbery.

So we’re gonna run through what those different elements are and what they mean and then talk about what classification of felony robbery is under Arizona law. Where do we find this information?

As always it’s at the Arizona Revised Statutes website. If you go there and look up 13-1902 you will see robbery. There are different levels of robbery.

So there’s robbery then the more serious level of that is aggravated robbery and then there’s armed robbery. We’re not talking about those other two, only today we’re talking about robbery. We’ll discuss the others in different videos. So what are the elements? What’s required of an individual?

What are they required to have done? What’s their mental, their mindset, their mental state? What kind of conduct did they have to engage in in order for this to be considered robbery? These are the different elements that are defined under the statute.

First and foremost, in order for it to be robbery it needs to be in the process of taking property. So all of the rest of this needs to have been done in the process of taking property. It’s very specific, taking property.

That property needs to be on the person or in the persons immediate vicinity. So it needs to be right in their presence.

So it’s not taking of property from somebody who’s not around, it’s not taking somebodies car when they’re inside asleep, it’s taking their wallet from that person, it’s taking their purse, it’s taking something that is physically on them or right near them.

So within the process of taking that property it needs to be from a person in order to be robbery. If it’s not from a person that element is not gonna be met.

So that could be a good defense. You can make an argument that that property that was taken was not on the person or in their immediate presence and therefore that element of robbery is not going to be met.

Also, in robbery there needs to be some sort of a threat or a threatening to use a certain amount of force. In a different video I talk about what force is.

There’s a definitions portion of robbery statutes.

You need to look those up as well, this is a key term of art, it’s a legal term of art.

Force means very specific things, I cover that in a different video, but threatening the use of force. Really what that means is some sort of physical activity that’s gonna coerce somebody into doing something.

There needs to be intent, so all of this needs to be done intentionally. A person needs to be doing this of their own will and knowing what they’re doing.

If any of this stuff happens accidentally or unknowingly there’s not gonna be any intent there.

So in criminal law you need an act, a physical conduct, but you also need a proper mental state and here this is intentionally.

Somebody is thinking intentionally I’m gonna go do this.

Then finally what we need here is all of this adding up in order to coerce a person to surrender that property or to prevent them from resisting surrendering that property.

So all of this behavior adds up and the purpose is all of this is intended to coerce a person to give up their property or it’s to prevent them from resisting giving up that property. So these are the five elements you can see here.

The statute is a little bit cumbersome. All of this is kinda blurred together in one big long sentence. We break it up as defense lawyers, because we want to attack each one of these different elements.

It’s important you understand that and understand that each one of these different terms here has different legal definitions and different terms of art. So what we want to do here is begin looking at the facts of your case, seeing where they don’t align with the elements of the statute.

If you can do that, and you can knock one of these elements out there’s a good argument that you are not actually guilty of robbery, because you don’t meet the statutory elements. Now that we know what the elements are what are the penalties for robbery charges? As I said at the beginning of the video there are more serious versions of robbery. In Arizona we have six classifications of felony offenses.

Class ones are at the top, they’re the most serious, class six at the bottom they’re the least serious. Robbery in Arizona is a class four felony. It’s kind of right there in the middle. It’s fairly serious charges, you can see here it’s not at the low end of the spectrum, it’s kind of right there in the middle.

So if you’ve been charged with robbery, if somebody that you know or love has been charged with robbery it’s very important that you discuss what you want to do in terms of legal representation.

If you can’t afford an attorney, they will appoint one for you, however, if you can it’s not going to hurt you to go and speak with private counsel.

We offer free case evaluations at our office, so if you or somebody you know has been charged with robbery give us a call, whether you can afford us or not.

We’re happy to sit down with you, talk about how these elements apply to your specific case, make sure you understand how they work, make sure more importantly that you have a plan moving forward so that you can survive this case and come out the other end in the best possible situation that is available to you.

So give us a call, we look forward to speaking with you soon and thanks for watching.