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Essex Tesco bin raid food woman admits charge

Onlyme | 01.06.2011 17:42 | Other Press | Repression

"'This is a far more serious matter than I first thought" said Judge Rodger Hayward Smith.

Store managers had been forced to throw away about £10,000 worth of spoilt food after a power cut.

Woman who accepted bag of pies and waffles retrieved by a friend from a Tesco bin admits handling stolen goodsBy Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 11:18 AM on 1st June 2011

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In court: Sasha Hall, 22, denied theft saying instead that a bag full of food had been delivered to her flat above the store by a friend
A woman accused of stealing £200 worth of ham, pies and potato waffles from a bin at a Tesco store has admitted handling stolen goods.
Sasha Hall, 22, claimed dozens of people raided the bin outside the Tesco Express store in Great Baddow, Essex, following a power failure on January 29.
But she denied theft at Chelmsford Crown Court, saying instead that a bag full of food had been delivered to her flat above the store by a friend.
Prosecutor Anil Patani told the court store managers had been forced to throw away about £10,000 worth of spoilt food following the power cut.
He said that when interviewed by police, Hall, who worked part-time at a rival supermarket in Chelmsford, said she was a regular customer at the store and had noticed the failure of fridges and freezers earlier in the day.
That evening a friend had delivered a bag, mainly containing 100 packets of ham, to her house and asked 'Do you want some free food?'.
Mr Patani told the court: 'She told the police that she did not know what she was receiving and was disappointed there was so much ham as she would have preferred some steak.
'She said that people from all over the estate had raided the bins.'
Defence advocate Emma Davenport said Hall had not been the person who packed the bags.
'When she took delivery of the bags she discovered they mostly contained ham and not much of any other variety,' she added.
'She did not plan to distribute the goods.'
Binned: Store managers had been forced to throw away about £10,000 worth of spoilt food following the power cut

Raided: Hall claimed dozens of people took food from the bin outside the Tesco Express store in Great Baddow, Essex, following a power failure on January 29
Hall currently holds down two jobs as she struggles with financial difficulties, she added.
Hall also admitted possession of cannabis. A count of theft was left to lie on file.
Judge Rodger Hayward Smith adjourned sentencing until June 20. He said: 'This is a far more serious matter than I first thought.'
Hall did not comment as she left court but earlier told the Essex Chronicle: 'There was £3,000 worth of food going to waste on the street. It had been thrown out, so I thought I could put it to better use.
'When the police came round I was so upset. I felt like a terrible criminal.
'I would think the police have better things to be doing with their time than going after people who pick up potato waffles from the street. It's all been blown totally out of proportion.
'Tesco clearly did not want the food. They dumped it and rather than see it go to waste, I thought I could help feed me and my family for a week or two.'

Onlyme

Comments

Hide the following 8 comments

She has let the state get an easy goal that it didn't deserve!

01.06.2011 21:25

Has it been proved that the goods wore stolen?
How can she be handling stolen goods if the goods are not stolen?
The stupid woman has admitted a crime that she has not committed to get off a charge of another crime that no one has committed.

According to the Theft Act 1968, the prosecution must prove all points of the 5 point test; the accused must have:
1. Dishonestly
2. Appropriated
3. Property
4. Belonging to another
5. With the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.

Has dishonesty been proven? Did the skipper try to cover their tracks or lie?

How could there be an intention of depriving Tesco of the food when they had already chosen to deprive themselves of it by putting it in the skip. May be the skipper deprived the waste company of their waste? Maybe bin men would like to give evidence as the victims of this serious crime?

Don't take independent legal advice because those qualified to give it are all members of the Law Society and therefor not independent!

Anarchist


the reasons are bullshit

01.06.2011 21:42

Excuses about liability and people getting sick and Tesco getting sued are standard bullshit.

Shame she admitted the charge.


i don't think so


understanding the law

02.06.2011 00:05

Has it been proved that the goods wore stolen?
How can she be handling stolen goods if the goods are not stolen?
The stupid woman has admitted a crime that she has not committed to get off a charge of another crime that no one has committed.

Yes, it is proven. The case of theft of rubbish was covered in my law course. Can't remember the exact reasoning, but basically, if something is put in the skip it doesn't mean it is abandoned - Tesco still own it. When the council pick it up, they own it. At no point is it not owned. Therefore, it is theft to take it.
No use arguing / bleating about it. Thats the law.


According to the Theft Act 1968, the prosecution must prove all points of the 5 point test; the accused must have:
1. Dishonestly
2. Appropriated
3. Property
4. Belonging to another
5. With the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.

That is not true :). In fact, that is a load of bollox.


Has dishonesty been proven? Did the skipper try to cover their tracks or lie?
Its theft. Taking something that is owned by someone else.

How could there be an intention of depriving Tesco of the food when they had already chosen to deprive themselves of it by putting it in the skip. May be the skipper deprived the waste company of their waste? Maybe bin men would like to give evidence as the victims of this serious crime?

Covered above. We went through it on our law course. It is valid.


Don't take independent legal advice because those qualified to give it are all members of the Law Society and therefor not independent!

But they obviously know the law - unlike yourself.
Its one thing to not like or agree with the law. But you don't understand it.

paul


Sounds like she needed a better lawyer

02.06.2011 08:20

How can you permanently deprive someone of something they've thrown in the bin? This charge was eminently beatable.

Paul - what exactly are your legal qualifications BTW?

Crazy Barry


the laws an arse

02.06.2011 09:11



secret is not to get caught

0


interpretation of the law

02.06.2011 09:31

This doesn't relate directly to the case at hand, and is surely a little too bourgeois-legal for the wild radicals on Indymedia, but Dr Sean Thomas, in a 2010 paper entitled 'Do Freegans Commit Theft?' concluded that:

"The analysis of the case-law on abandonment, and in particular the decisions in Hibbert v McKiernan and Rostron,194 indicates that a significant determining factor in finding situations is the (dis)honesty of the finder. It is submitted that a freegan will have a greater chance of defending himself against a charge of theft on the grounds he is not dishonest. This may be counter-intuitive, as at first sight it is arguable that a freegan is acting dishonestly. However, as has been shown, a more rational approach is to view freeganism as something that is not dishonest, either subjectively or objectively. The impact of Ghosh, and the definition of dishonesty in the Theft Act
1968, provides various opportunities for freegans to show that they are not dishonest and are thus not thieves.

"It is important to avoid putting words (or purposes) into the law of theft which do not belong there: according to Bridge LJ the courts should ‘shun the temptation which sometimes presses on the mind of the judiciary to suppose that because a particular course of conduct . . . was anti-social and undesirable, it can necessarily be fitted into some convenient criminal pigeon-hole’. I think it is probably unlikely that Bridge LJ had the concept of freeganism at the top of his mind when he made this statement, but the applicability of the general principle it enunciates cannot be doubted. Freeganism covers behaviour, such as bin-diving, which portions of society may well find disgusting, possibly even anti-social.Yet for those reasons alone certain behaviour cannot be criminalised. There must surely be some harm involved. And that is the crux of the matter. Freegans cannot be understood as harming anyone. They are disposing of property that has already been deemed unworthy of retention or ‘appropriate’ commercial disposition. To the extent that freegans reduce the potential costs of disposal of waste as landfill, or by incineration, it could well be argued that their behaviour is in fact harm-reducing, and as such should be lauded and not criminalised.""

Paul
- Homepage: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1748-121X.2009.00142.x/pdf


We have the highest regards for courts of justice;)

02.06.2011 10:28

for if we had no justice we could have no anarchy.
Although the goods may have beed stolen, has it been proven?
What was the date of the court case in which it was proven?
Can we see a copy of the judgment?
If not, the fact that the goods may have been stolen is merely hearsay, and courts of justice work on evidence not tittle tattle.

Although law students and members of the law society are obsessed with president cases as they see them, courts are obsessed with facts. So use them properly, don't let the law society do it for you.

A


@crazy

02.06.2011 19:13

Not qualified. Just studied it. Ba in English and Law

paul


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