Italian Man Acquitted Of Stealing Eggplant After 9-Year Court Battle

A court battle that stretched on for nearly a decade and cost thousands in public funds is finally over after Italy's highest appeals court acquitted the defendant of stealing a single eggplant in 2009.

According to The Local, Italy, the defendant was arrested in 2009 when police caught him with an eggplant he had allegedly taken from a privately owned field near Lecce, in the southern Italian region of Puglia. The man, who was 49 years old at the time, reportedly pleaded with police and said he was unemployed, and that he had taken the eggplant because he was desperate to feed his child. He was arrested and charged anyway, and he was sentenced to five months in prison and a fine of 500 euros, then equivalent to about $660.

The man appealed the ruling and his sentence was reduced to two months in jail and a fine of 120 euros, or about $158. The man's legal counsel reportedly encouraged him to appeal again, this time to the Supreme Court of Cassation in Rome, Italy's highest appeals court.

Nine years after the man was originally arrested for the eggplant theft, the court acquitted him, saying that there were grounds for justification because the defendant was acting to feed his hungry family. The court also chided the lower courts for having let the case go as far as it did, and said that over the years the case had cost around 7,000 euros, or $8,600, of public money in legal fees. Your own eggplant — grown or purchased, not stolen — would be great in one of our best eggplant recipes.