Woman guilty of shoplifting

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE

© St. Petersburg Times, published January 6, 2001

LARGO -- Jennifer Robinson said she was molested and sexually assaulted as a child. Today she is a 32-year-old who blames that abuse for leading her down a "self-defeating" path.

"I'm not saying this for pity," the Tarpon Springs resident told a Pinellas-Pasco circuit judge.

On Friday, Robinson pleaded guilty to felony theft charges for two north Pinellas shoplifting incidents, including one in which she is accused of speeding from a Publix with her 12-year-old daughter hanging half out of her car.

She also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of resisting a merchant and admitted a probation violation.

"I'm sorry for the things I've done that have brought me here," Robinson said. "I'm not sorry I got caught. I'm sorry because being here makes me understand how many people I have hurt. I deserve punishment for what I have done."

Robinson will get it. But how much punishment remains unclear.

Judge Mark Shames postponed sentencing her until Feb. 1 because Robinson's husband is still not sure whether his work insurance would pay for mental-health treatment that Robinson's lawyer wants made part of any sentence.

Prosecutors asked Shames to sentence her to two years in prison followed by three years' probation.

Robinson's was an open plea, meaning she received no guarantee about her punishment from prosecutors or the judge.

On Oct. 1, a customer at a Tarpon Springs Publix noticed Robinson stuffing items into her purse. The customer alerted Publix managers, who confronted the woman as she left the U.S. 19 N store.

Robinson's 12-year-old daughter was in another aisle when managers approached her.

Two managers tried to stop Robinson, but she got into her car and drove away "extremely fast," leaving her daughter behind, according to a police report.

Witnesses told police that Robinson, after leaving the first time, returned to the parking lot, told her daughter to get in and pulled her into the car. As she drove off the second time, the car door was still open and her daughter was "half-in and half-out of the car," police said.

Police quickly caught up to her. In the trunk, they found $275 worth of groceries, including soda and packages of meat that still were cold.

Police initially charged Robinson with child abuse, a charge that prosecutors did not pursue. The girl was not injured.

Two months before her Publix arrest, Robinson was charged with grand theft and resisting a merchant after an incident in which she allegedly left the Burdines store at Countryside Mall with $329 worth of clothing in a bag.

She then refused to return to the store after Burdines loss-prevention employees approached her and a friend in the mall.

At the time of both incidents, Robinson was on 18 months' probation for shoplifting $300 in groceries from an Albertson's in Palm Harbor.

Recent coverage

Police: Shoplifter fled, left daughter (October 3, 2000)

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