This crime really didn't pay.
A 7-cent robbery might sound like a petty crime, but, combined with the assault of a 73-year-old man, it's landed 15-year-old Anthony Stewart some serious time in juvenile detention.
Onondaga County Judge William Walsh decided that Stewart deserved to have the incident on his permanent record. The defendant will spend at least two years in juvenile detention, according to the Daily News. Judge Walsh said he refused to try the boy as a "youthful offender" and wanted the charge to remain on his record because he didn't initially plead guilty, even though both his accomplice and the assaulted man identified him.
"And yet you still denied it," Walsh told Stewart, reported the Syracuse Post-Standard. "Well, that cost you."
"For 7 cents, now you're making someone a felon for the rest of his life," Laurin Haddad, Stewart's lawyer said, according to the Post-Standard.
Unlike Stewart, his accomplice, Skyler Ninham, 16, pleaded guilty and was sentenced as a youthful offender, according to Syracuse.com. He'll serve a minimum of one year at a state prison.
According to Newser, the boys ran up to a 73-year-old man, punched him in the face, breaking his glasses, and robbed him of 7 cents -- all the money he had in his pockets.
Both boys held what seemed to be guns during the December 2010 robbery, though they turned out to be BB guns.
Stewart was convicted of first-degree robbery in July, just two days before Ninham pled guilty, according to the Daily News.
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