[MSN] Student enters plea on theft on Berkeley Nobel Prize medal

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Student enters plea on theft on Berkeley Nobel Prize medal
The Associated Press
Article Launched: 10/03/2007 12:05:18 AM PDT


OAKLAND, Calif.-A student charged with stealing the first Nobel Prize medal
received by a University of California, Berkeley professor from a display
case pleaded no contest Tuesday as part of a plea deal. 
Ian Michael Sanchez, 22, a UC Berkeley biology student, had faced up to one
year in prison if convicted of felony grand theft for taking the medal
awarded to Professor Ernest Lawrence in 1939 for inventing the cyclotron, a
particle accelerator which helped spawn the nuclear age. 

As part of the plea deal, prosecutors reduced the charge to misdemeanor
vandalism. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Sandra Bean sentenced Sanchez
to three years' probation and ordered him to perform 150 hours of community
service and to undergo counseling. 

Neither he nor his defense lawyer commented on the plea as they left court. 

Sanchez worked at the Lawrence Hall of Science, a museum and research center
where the medal was kept, when the prize was stolen from a locked display
case in March. He showed it to his fraternity brothers, and an informant
notified police. The medal, which was found in the attic of Sanchez's
parents' Modesto home, no longer is on public display. 

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Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle