Background
Michael D. Saunders Jr. responded to a Facebook Marketplace listing for four tires advertised by G.L. for $275. At G.L.’s Kettering home, her son Tony helped load tires into a truck in which Saunders was a passenger while Saunders sought a lower price.
G.L. declined to reduce the price. Tony testified that he returned outside to tell Saunders the price would remain $275, then went back inside after Saunders said he needed only three tires. While Tony was inside, the truck left with all four tires. Saunders told police and G.L. that he had paid Tony $205, but Tony testified that Saunders had not paid. A jury convicted Saunders of theft, and the Kettering Municipal Court imposed a suspended 180-day sentence, two years of probation, and a $10 fine.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District affirmed. Tony’s testimony that Saunders took the tires without paying was sufficient evidence from which a rational jury could find that Saunders knowingly obtained control over the tires without consent and with the purpose to deprive G.L. of them, as required by R.C. 2913.02(A)(1).
The court rejected Saunders’s arguments that Tony’s assistance loading the tires established consent and that Saunders’s later offer to return them negated an intent to steal. It also held that the guilty verdict was not against the manifest weight of the evidence: the jury could credit Tony’s account over Saunders’s assertion that he paid $205, and Tony’s testimony was not inherently incredible.
Key Takeaways
- A victim’s agent helping load property before payment does not itself establish consent to take it without payment.
- Intent to deprive may be proved through circumstantial evidence and the surrounding conduct.
- On manifest-weight review, appellate courts defer substantially to the jury’s credibility determinations unless the jury plainly lost its way.
Why It Matters
The decision illustrates the distinction between legal sufficiency and weight-of-the-evidence review in a theft case turning on competing accounts of payment. A single eyewitness’s credible testimony that property was taken without payment can support both the elements of theft and a jury verdict, even where the defendant offers a contrary explanation.