To Be Guilty of "Taking" a Car You Have To, Well, Take a Car

State v. Thonesavanh, Minn.Ct.App., 6/6/2016.  J.V. called the local constabulary because a man who turned out to be Mr. Thonesavanh was banging on his door.  By the time the cops arrived Mr. Thonesavanh was sitting behind the wheel of J.V.'s car, which was parked in the driveway. The engine was running and the reverse lights were illuminated.  But the car never moved.  Or at least no one was willing to say that it moved.

The cops eventually persuaded Mr. Thonesavanh to get out of the car. The state charged him with theft of a motor vehicle under Minn.Stat. 609.52, subd 2(a)(17.  One is guilty of this offense if she "takes or drives a motor vehicle without the consent of the owner or an authorized agent of the owner, knowing or having reason to know that the owner or an authorized agent of the owner did not give consent.  Mr. Thonesavanh moved to dismiss the charge, saying that he never "took" J.V.'s car.  The trial court agreed, saying that the "takes" in this statute" requires that a defendant exercise "independent, absolute control over the property involved, even if only for a short time" and that a defendant be involved in "movement of the property."  The state appealed.

And lost.  The court of appeals said that the "take" language of the statute was ambiguous and then hauled out the dictionaries.  A lot of dictionaries, including the sixteen pages dedicated to the word "take" in the Compact Oxford English Dictionary.  

Whether this conclusion "takes" remains to be seen.  Mr. Thonesavanh was behind the wheel of car whose engine was running and in gear.  And there's all that money flowing out of the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute car thefts.