The Criminal Code definition of robbery is provided below:
- 343. Every one commits robbery who
(a) steals, and for the purpose of extorting whatever is stolen or to prevent or overcome resistance to the stealing, uses violence or threats of violence to a person or property;
(b) steals from any person and, at the time he steals or immediately before or immediately thereafter, wounds, beats, strikes or uses any personal violence to that person;
(c) assaults any person with intent to steal from him; or
(d) steals from any person while armed with an offensive weapon or imitation thereof.
Robbery is a crime that involves stealing from another person’s goods or property by way of violence, force, or threatening. This is usually both a crime of theft and violence.
Stealing means committing theft, which means taking something from someone without colour of right and converting it to the use of another person.
The element of “violence” is made out by an unlawful assault. An utterance that threatens force will be sufficient to make out the element of “violence.” There is no need to measure the degree of violence. A threat of violence need not be overt. A display of a knife while hooded and a demand for money is an implied threat of violence. Holding a person down to prevent resistance constitutes violence. Passing a note requesting money to a bank teller without any words being spoken can be sufficient to make out a threat of violence.
The violence or threats of violence must be for the purpose of taking whatever is stolen and so it requires that the violence or threats be before or contemporaneous to the theft. If, however, the property was “stolen clandestinely” or “surreptitiously”, then the presence of violence or threats of violence to enable escape will not make out a robbery under s. 344(a).
Robbery under .s 343(a) requires “contemporaneous use of violence or threats of violence in the course of, and for the purpose of, taking” other person’s property. There must be more than a temporal link between the threats and the violence. An assault or threat occurring after the completion of a theft, at least enough time has passed to make it a separate event, there can be no conviction for robbery under s. 343(a).
Purse-snatching will not make out a robbery where the item was taken before the victim had a chance to resist..