DADE CITY, Fla. -- A Dade City woman, arrested and convicted for stealing railroad property from CSX, has been cleared of any wrongdoing by an appeals court. Susan Townsend maintained she was picking up junk along the side of the road to clean the environment and to exercise.
When a Pasco County Sheriff's deputy saw her with a handful of rusty railroad spikes February 2008, he arrested her for felony theft of railroad property. Townsend argued she was allowed to pick up the rusting metal scraps, because it was trash. That argument got her a trip to jail.
The state eventually offered Townsend a plea deal to petit theft charges, but Townsend insisted she did nothing wrong and went to trial. At trial, Townsend told the jury a Hernando County deputy had previously thanked her for cleaning trash from CSX property so she assumed it was allowed. However, Townsend says, a CSX witness testified nobody was permitted to clean trash off the tracks except CSX employees.
Townsend was convicted of petit theft and ordered to perform 100 hours of community service. Convinced she was right, Townsend appealed. This week the Sixth District Court of Appeals reversed Townsend's conviction, ruling clearly Townsend had no intent to steal, merely clean. The appeals court decision said there were "No...signs prohibiting trespassing or prohibiting the removal of the items in question."
Townsend won her case, but it cost her a night in jail, thousands of dollars in legal fees and court costs, and 100 hours of her time for the community service she performed before her conviction was overturned.
CSX did not immediately return a call for comment from ABC Action News.com.
(The preceding report appeared on the Web site www.abcactionnews.com on September 17, 2009.)
