The Ethics of Shoplifting

Some time ago in this space, I did an ethics post on pilferage, and how this actually hurts everybody who does business with the pilfered company much more than it does the business itself. I’ve also had a few choice comments in this space about personal responsibility, and how there are times when suing someone over matters of strict liability is more complicated than people seem to think it is. I hadn’t expected, however, that both threads would be picked up in a single news story…

There’s a case out of Honolulu being reported by Fox News online about a man who died after allegedly taking two 12-packs of beer out of a hotel convenience store without paying for them, was confronted by the store manager and another hotel patrol about the theft, initiated a fight with the store owner, and subsequently died of injuries sustained during the confrontation. Because this is a Fox case the linked story is leaving out the fact that the man actually died of mechanical asphyxia after the convenience store manager and the other hotel guest sat on his back while waiting for the police to arrive, which complicates matters a bit, but I think the ethical questions are essentially the same whether we give the original story a pro-business/anti-crime slant or not – at least, once we realize that the shoplifter’s wife is now suing for wrongful death…

On the one hand, the dead man was committing a crime; if the facts of the case as stated are accurate, we can easily conclude that if he’d just paid for the beer instead of trying to steal it, he would still be alive. We can also attack the shoplifter on moral grounds, in that his theft wasn’t motivated by the necessity of feeding his family or any other worthwhile enterprise; the man in question was on vacation from California and was just trying to save money on his vacation expenses. The loss of merchandise would certainly have impacted the livelihood of the store owner, and might easily have driven up the price of everything in the store for everyone else who shops there. But even if all of this is true, it’s still difficult to ethically defend the practice of killing someone over misdemeanor theft, in this case for less than $50 worth of merchandise. Stealing beer may be a heinous offense, but it’s still difficult to support making it a capital one…

On the other side of the case, the shoplifter’s wife most certainly has been deprived of his companionship and income (California is a community-property state; therefore his income is also hers) without due process or compensation, and it would be impossible to argue that the store manager and his companion had any right to take the shoplifter’s life. It seems unlikely that they meant to do so, and even more unlikely that you’d be able to convince an jury to convict them of murder (negligent homicide will be hard enough to prosecute), but negligence seems fairly straightforward in this case. If you don’t know how to safely apprehend someone you shouldn’t try; and if you kill them in the process you are, in fact, being negligent. But by the same token, all the manager and his companion were trying to do was their civic duty (e.g. preventing a criminal from escaping the police). Many people would criticize them for ducking that obligation, although it isn’t usually considered a crime to do so…

In fact, there are actually two ethical questions here. First, should the widow of the shoplifter be compensated because the two men in our story killed him for a trivial offense, and if so, should the chain of convenience stores and the resort in which the store was located share responsibility for the award? And second, should the killers be sent to prison for attempting to stop a tourist from stealing from the store?

It’s worth thinking about…