A prosecutor must take many factors into consideration before deciding whether or not to charge the defendant. After reading chapter 12, consider the following scenarios: 1. A UNH student stole an cassette recorder to record his criminal procedure class lectures because his professor has a foreign accent and the student doesn`t always understand every word. The student works part time to pay for school, and although he could have paid for the recorder, it would have been difficult. He has never been in trouble with the law before and says he`ll pay for the recorder. 2. A woman who works only occasionally stole a cordless phone for a friend who agreed to pay $35, half of the phone`s value. The woman has taken compact discs, tape cassettes, and an answering machine from the same store within the past six months. 3. A 50-year-old woman slipped a pair of stereo earphones into her purse. The woman is wealthy and indignantly denied that she intended to steal the earphones. She told the detective she put the device in her bag because she wanted to pick up some film, batteries, and other small items and simply forgot she had put it there. What advice would you give to the prosecutor in each of the three cases? Full credit (15 points) will be given if you support your recommendation by citing the cases and other material in this chapter.
