Galvanized plates case
A young unemployed man living in a small willage in a remote region, didn’t like going to the job centre to ask for a job. Instead of this he decided to get money by commiting crimes.
He knew, that some roofs of cottages nearby are covered with galvanized plates, so he usually arrived to such cottage when it was abandoned and tore plates off from the roofs, then he cut plates into a small pieces and hid them at home. He didn’t want to sell plates immediately, because it would have been striking. During 2 weeks he managed to steal plates from 5 cottages. The value of stolen plates was quite high and cottages without roofs were unprotected for a few days, so their owners were caused another damage, because this crime was commited during the rainy season.
Police wasn’t able to detect the perpetrator, because there weren’t any witnesses and he didn’t try to sell stolen plates to a company that purchases metal from the people, but after a few weeks someone stole plates from another 2 cottages and it was clear that plates were stolen by the same person. This time the police managed to catch him leaving the second cottage with stolen plates.
The perpetrator didn’t try to deny his crime and he allowed the police to search the cellar, where he hid all the stolen plates.
He was accused both of a theft and of a crime called Damaging of another person’s thing. He was questioned the same day and during one week an expert assessed both the value of stolen plates and the one of the damaged things from the unprotected cottages.
It was his first crime, so he wasn’t arrested during investigation. The judge sentenced him to jail for 14 months. The punishment seemed too strict for him, because he only expected imprisonment, which would have been conditionally hold off for a few years. But he stole things from 7 cottages and he was responsible for damaging other things on them. His punishment was found adequate by the prosecutor who didn’t appeal and the appeal of the perpetrator was rejected during the appellate procedure.
I have to add that he didn’t execute the whole punishment. After less then 8 months of imprisonment he was conditionaly released on 2 year’s trial and during it he proved himself, so he didn’t have to to be sent to prison to execute the rest of his punishment.