that might explain the difference in our points of view of the situation as it is presented in the writeup.  to me, the disparity between a fountain in a public park and a fountain in a shopping mall is not that great.  granted, the mall is a private property, but one that exists with the purpose of inviting as much of the public into it as possible.  it's only slightly more private than a park.  had there been no sign indicating the coins in the fountain were intended for charity, i'm guessing there would've been little, if any, issue at all associated with Mujzer's actions.

i am further of the opinion that it was a poor way for the charity to solicit donations.  the donations should have been secured, rather than kept in a fountain.  it is not unheard of for people to take coins from a fountain and those actions, while they may be frowned upon, are not normally considered a crime.  a fountain is, therefore, a bad place to store coins if you expect them to stay there unmolested, and i don't think putting up a sign is a sufficient safeguard.  i know i probably sounds like i'm blaming the victim, here, and perhaps i am, though that's not my intent.

i'm not trying to excuse Mujzer's actions, as i hope i made clear in my earlier post.  i would have preferred that he left the coins alone.  i don't think, though, what he did merited his being charged and arrested.  as you said, there is a difference between taking cash off the street and taking it out of your spare change bowl at home. i think Mujzer's actions fall far short of burglary (for which i would definitely expect him to be arrested, regardless of the quantity of change he took from your change bowl).  to me, it's more like he walked into a doctor's waiting room, saw a bowl of candy that had a sign on it saying, "candy is for patients only" and took a few pieces.  uncool?  yes, definitely.  arrestable?  in my opinion, no.

Good points. Without excusing Mujzer's actions, I'd also argue that no one really takes charitable solicitations through fountains seriously. People throwing pennies into wells and then fountains is an age old concept. You make a wish and toss the coin. Are people writing these coins off as charitable contributions on their IRS forms? I highly doubt it. The fact that the money is given to charity only even happens because if the mall didn't clean the fountain out, it'd overflow with money eventually.

I'll take an example. Every year at my elementary school, the sixth grade organized a penny fair as a trip fund raiser. Each sixth grader had to come up with an activity that the other grades could come around and participate in for a penny or two. When it came our turn, I remembered the previous year everyone in my class coming back from the penny fair with tons of extra pennies so I thought, "how can we get people to spend all those extra pennies instead of taking them back home where they clearly weren't wanted anyway." Half the people just threw them away. So I built a wishing well. My teacher was extremely disappointed that I came up with such a limited, uncreative activity and asked me how I expected to get people to spend money on such a silly idea. Day of the penny fair came and I was actually sick but they set my idea up with the rest in the gym anyway. Turned out my idea worked itself. While everyone else busily manned their stations, mine quietly raked in all that unspent cash effort-free and out earned every other activity combined. We raised a record $382.17 that year. And that's a crapload of pennies.

What's the moral of my story? People don't expect shit in return when they throw money into a standing body of water. They don't expect it to go to charity. They don't care if someone else takes it. They just want to be freakin rid of that useless change. I'm certain the mall didn't place the fountain there as a charitable effort. First came the fountain, then came the coins then came the what the fuck do we do with all these damn coins moment. They give it to their kid and tell their kid to make a wish. When you take money out of a fountain--even if you're giving it to charity--you're stealing the dreams of babes and there isn't a higher offense in the court of karma.

It is easy to buy small plaster models of what you think life is like.