You’re staring at an MBE question that starts with “A man entered a house…” and your brain immediately screams burglary! But then you read further—he grabbed a laptop and threatened the homeowner with a knife. Wait, is that robbery now? Or both? And how does plain theft fit into all this?

Property crimes trip up more bar examinees than almost any other Criminal Law topic. The MBE loves testing the boundaries between robbery, burglary, and theft because the distinctions are precise, counterintuitive, and easy to blur under exam pressure. Let’s break down exactly what separates these crimes and how to spot them cold on test day.

The Fundamental Distinction: What’s Being Protected?

Here’s the key insight that clarifies everything: these three crimes protect different interests, even though they all involve taking someone else’s stuff.

Larceny (the legal term for theft) protects your right to possess your property. It’s the baseline property crime—someone takes your thing without permission and intends to keep it permanently.

Robbery protects both your property and your personal safety. It’s larceny plus violence or the threat of violence. The law treats robbery more seriously because you’re being victimized twice: losing property and being subjected to force or fear.

Burglary protects the security of your home (or other structures). Surprisingly, burglary doesn’t actually require that anything be stolen. It’s about the invasion of a protected space with criminal intent.

Once you internalize what each crime protects, the elements start making sense.

Larceny: The Foundation Crime

Larceny is the trespassory taking and carrying away of the personal property of another with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of the property. It’s a specific intent crime, meaning the prosecution must prove the defendant intended that permanent deprivation at the moment of taking.

Break down the elements:

Trespassory taking means the defendant took possession without permission. If you hand me your phone to look at photos and I walk away with it, that’s not larceny at the moment I receive it—my initial possession was lawful. That scenario might be embezzlement instead.

Carrying away (asportation) requires any movement of the property, however slight. Sliding a wallet across a table counts. The property doesn’t need to leave the premises.

Personal property of another excludes real estate and requires that someone else have a superior possessory interest. You cannot commit larceny of your own property, even if someone else is temporarily holding it.

Intent to permanently deprive is the killer element on the MBE. Borrowing isn’t larceny, even if you take without permission. If a defendant honestly intends to return the property, there’s no larceny—though there might be other crimes like joyriding for vehicles.

Here’s where it gets tricky: the continuing trespass doctrine. If the defendant takes property without permission but without intent to steal, and later decides to keep it, larceny is committed at the moment that intent forms. The initial wrongful taking continues, and the theft intent attaches to it.

Example: You borrow your roommate’s car without asking, planning to return it in an hour. While driving, you decide to keep it and drive to another state. That’s larceny when you form the intent to permanently deprive, even though your initial taking wasn’t theft.

Robbery: Larceny Plus Force

Robbery is the trespassory taking and carrying away of personal property of another from the person or in the person’s presence, by force or intimidation, with the intent to permanently deprive. Essentially, robbery is larceny with two additional elements: the property must be taken from the victim’s person or presence, and force or intimidation must be used.

The force or intimidation must be used to obtain the property or to retain it immediately after taking. Threatening someone, grabbing their phone, and running away is robbery. Finding a phone on a table, pocketing it, and then punching the owner when they try to stop you is also robbery—the force was used to retain the property.

But here’s a crucial limitation: the force must occur during or immediately after the taking. If you steal someone’s laptop on Monday and punch them on Friday when they confront you, that’s larceny plus battery, not robbery. The temporal connection matters.

From the person or presence means either directly from the victim’s body (pickpocketing, purse-snatching) or from an area within their control. Holding a store clerk at gunpoint while emptying the register is robbery even though the cash isn’t physically on the clerk’s person—it’s in their presence and under their control.

The MBE loves testing the boundaries of “presence.” If a defendant forces a homeowner into the basement at gunpoint, then goes upstairs and takes jewelry from the bedroom, that’s still robbery. The property was in the victim’s presence in the sense that it was in their dwelling and under their general control, even if they couldn’t see it being taken.

Burglary: The Misunderstood Crime

Here’s what most bar examinees get wrong about burglary: you don’t have to steal anything. You don’t even have to succeed at whatever crime you intended. Burglary is complete the moment you break and enter with the requisite intent.

Common law burglary requires the breaking and entering of the dwelling house of another at nighttime with the intent to commit a felony therein. Modern statutes have relaxed most of these requirements, but the MBE tests both common law and modern variations.

Breaking requires creating an opening or enlarging an existing one. Pushing open a closed door is breaking. Walking through an already-open door is not, unless you open it further. Using fraud or intimidation to gain entry also qualifies (constructive breaking). If the homeowner opens the door because you pretend to be a delivery person, that’s breaking.

Entering requires any part of the defendant’s body—or an instrument used to commit the felony—to cross the threshold. Reaching your hand through a window to grab something inside is entry. Sending a trained monkey through the window is entry (yes, really—that’s a classic example).

Dwelling house of another at common law meant a structure used for sleeping, and it had to belong to someone else. Modern statutes typically expand this to any building or structure, not just dwellings, and not just at nighttime.

Intent to commit a felony therein is the critical mental state. The defendant must have this intent at the time of entry. If you break into a house planning to commit larceny, that’s burglary even if you get scared and leave without taking anything. If you break in to get out of the rain and only later decide to steal something, that’s not burglary—it’s criminal trespass plus larceny.

This is why burglary is a specific intent crime despite being classified as a crime against property and habitation rather than a theft crime. The intent required is not just to enter, but to commit a felony once inside.

Comparing the Crimes: Hypothetical Fact Patterns

Let’s test your understanding with MBE-style scenarios:

Scenario 1: Defendant breaks into a house at 2 a.m. while the homeowner is asleep upstairs. Defendant takes a laptop from the living room and leaves without the homeowner waking up.

That’s burglary (breaking and entering a dwelling at night with intent to commit larceny) and larceny (the actual taking of the laptop). It’s not robbery because no force or intimidation was used against a person.

Scenario 2: Defendant knocks on a door at 3 p.m. When the homeowner answers, defendant pushes past them, punches them, grabs a laptop from the living room, and flees.

That’s robbery (taking property from the victim’s presence by force). It’s also burglary under modern statutes that don’t require nighttime (the defendant entered with intent to commit larceny and used force to effectuate entry). It’s not common law burglary because the homeowner opened the door—there was no breaking.

Scenario 3: Defendant finds an unlocked door, enters a house intending only to use the bathroom, sees a wallet on the counter, and takes it.

That’s larceny but not burglary. The defendant lacked the intent to commit a felony at the time of entry. It might be criminal trespass plus larceny, but burglary requires the felonious intent to exist at entry.

Scenario 4: Defendant approaches a victim on the street, displays a knife, and demands the victim’s phone. The victim refuses and runs away. Defendant does not pursue.

That’s attempted robbery. All the elements of robbery are present except completion—the defendant used intimidation and intended to take property from the victim’s person, but the taking never occurred. Note that attempted robbery is not the same as assault; the specific intent was to commit robbery, not merely to threaten.

The Felony Murder Connection

Here’s why these distinctions matter beyond just identifying the charged crime: robbery and burglary are both enumerated felonies under the felony murder rule. If someone dies during the commission of a robbery or burglary, the defendant can be charged with felony murder even without intent to kill.

Remember the mnemonic BARRK: Burglary, Arson, Rape, Robbery, and Kidnapping are the traditional inherently dangerous felonies that trigger felony murder liability. Larceny is not on that list. This means if a defendant commits a simple theft and someone coincidentally has a heart attack, that’s not felony murder. But if the defendant commits a robbery (larceny plus force) and the victim has a heart attack from the stress of being threatened, that’s felony murder.

The MBE tests this intersection frequently: a burglary question where someone dies, or a robbery where the victim suffers a fatal heart attack. You need to recognize both the underlying property crime and the potential homicide liability.

The MBE also tests variations on basic theft that students mix up:

Larceny by trick is obtaining possession (not title) of property through a false representation. You lie to borrow someone’s car and never return it. You got possession through fraud, but the owner never intended to transfer ownership.

False pretenses is obtaining title to property through fraud. You convince someone to sell you their car by showing them a fake cashier’s check. They intended to transfer ownership based on your lie.

Embezzlement is the fraudulent conversion of property you already lawfully possess. You’re a bank teller who pockets cash from the drawer. Your initial possession was lawful (entrusted to you), but you converted it to your own use.

The key distinction: larceny involves a trespassory taking (wrongful from the start), while embezzlement involves lawful possession that’s later converted. Robbery is larceny accomplished through force, not a separate category of acquisition.

What to Memorize for Test Day

When you see a property crime question on the MBE, run through this checklist:

For larceny: Was there a taking and carrying away of another’s personal property with intent to permanently deprive? If the defendant had lawful possession initially, consider embezzlement instead.

For robbery: Does the fact pattern include all elements of larceny PLUS force or intimidation used to obtain or retain the property from the victim’s person or presence? The force and taking must be temporally connected.

For burglary: Was there a breaking (creating or enlarging an opening) and entry of a structure with the intent to commit a felony inside? The intent must exist at the moment of entry. Remember that modern statutes often eliminate the “nighttime” and “dwelling” requirements.

For all three: Identify what interest is being protected. Larceny protects possession of property. Robbery protects property plus personal safety. Burglary protects the security of structures and habitation.

The MBE will try to blur these lines by giving you fact patterns with multiple crimes occurring simultaneously or in sequence. A defendant might commit burglary by breaking in, then commit robbery by threatening someone inside, then commit larceny of additional items from another room. Identify each crime separately based on its distinct elements.

Organizing These Rules for Active Recall

Property crimes are heavily tested on the MBE Criminal Law section, and the distinctions between robbery, burglary, and theft are precisely the kind of element-by-element comparison that traditional bar prep courses explain once and expect you to just “know.” The problem is that passive reading doesn’t build the instant recognition you need when you’re staring at question 27 of 100 and your brain is already tired.

If you want all the Criminal Law property crime rules organized in a format designed for active recall—with each element spelled out and the distinctions between related crimes clearly mapped—FlashTables Criminal Law & Procedure covers robbery, burglary, larceny, and all their variations in structured two-column tables. The format forces you to test yourself: cover one column, recall the rule, check your answer. That’s how you build the automaticity to spot these crimes instantly on test day without second-guessing yourself.

The bottom line: robbery, burglary, and theft are not interchangeable terms, and the MBE will punish you for treating them as such. Robbery is theft plus force. Burglary is unlawful entry with criminal intent, regardless of whether anything is taken. Larceny is the wrongful taking with intent to permanently deprive. Master those distinctions, understand what each crime protects, and you’ll handle every property crime question the examiners throw at you.