If you are facing a robbery charge in Lehigh County, the burden of the prosecutor is to show the following:
A person is guilty of robbery if, in the course of committing a theft, he:
(i) inflicts serious bodily injury upon another;
(ii) threatens another with or intentionally puts him in fear of immediate serious bodily injury;
(iii) commits or threatens immediately to commit any felony of the first or second degree;
(iv) inflicts bodily injury upon another or threatens another with or intentionally puts him in fear of immediate bodily injury;
(v) physically takes or removes property from the person of another by force however slight; or
(vi) takes or removes the money of a financial institution without the permission of the financial institution by making a demand of an employee of the financial institution orally or in writing with the intent to deprive the financial institution thereof.
Bodily injury or the threat of it is a key element that your Lehigh County criminal lawyer should advise you about. 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3701(a)(1)(iv) provides that a robbery occurs when in the course of committing a theft the defendant inflicts bodily injury upon another, or threatens another with or intentionally puts him in fear of immediate bodily injury, and it is graded as a felony of the second degree with a penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment. Under 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3701(a)(1)(v), a robbery occurs where in the course of committing a theft the defendant physically takes or removes property from the person of another by force, however slight, and it is graded as a felony of the third degree with a penalty of up to seven years imprisonment.
An important case is Commonwealth v. Brown, 506 Pa. 169 (Pa. 1984). In this case, the defendant was convicted of robbery, a felony in the third degree. The lower court affirmed the conviction, and defendant again sought review of the decision. Defendant contended that the evidence at trial was insufficient to establish that he had committed a robbery by force however slight pursuant to 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 3701(a)(1)(v). The court held that any amount of force applied to a person when a theft was committed was within the scope of robbery under § 3701(a)(1)(v). The degree of actual force was immaterial, so long as it was sufficient to separate the victim from his property in, on, or about his body. The force that defendant used in when he took the purse from the victim's arm was a harmful touching of the person, accompanied with sufficient force to compel her to part with the conscious control of her property, and was, therefore, sufficient to support a robbery conviction under § 3701(a)(1)(v).