Utah’s Court of Appeals said a man convicted of theft should only have to pay a sale price in restitution. In an unusual ruling issued over the weekend, a three-judge panel reversed the amount of restitution that Bashar Sabbagh had to pay for his crime.
Sabbagh was convicted of taking four sets of headphones valued at $299 each, but put on sale by Weber State University’s book store for $175. Prosecutors demanded that Sabbagh pay $1,999 in restitution, valuing the headphones at $299 each.
“Sabbagh, on the other hand, pointed out that the fair market value of the headphones should be the price at which they had been offered for sale, and accordingly argued that the proper restitution amount should be $700 ($175 x 4). The district court agreed with the State, and ordered Sabbagh to pay $1,199.76 in restitution,” Judge Ryan Harris wrote. But in their ruling, the Utah Court of Appeals sided with Sabbagh and… Fox13 News