Actress receives probation for theft

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Winona Ryder was sentenced Friday to work with the sick, the blind and babies with AIDS as part of a probationary term for stealing more than $5,500 worth of high-fashion merchandise from a Saks Fifth Avenue store.

"If you steal again you will go to jail," Superior Court Judge Elden Fox told the actress.

The judge ordered her to undergo psychological and drug counseling.

He imposed three years of probation and said Ryder must appear in court April 7 for a status report. Ryder also was ordered to perform 480 hours of community service.

She was ordered to pay $3,700 in fines and restitution of $6,355 to Saks.

Ryder faced up to three years in prison, but prosecutors did not recommend any time behind bars because she had no prior convictions.

Her lawyer, Mark Geragos, suggested that Ryder has been punished more than the average person would be because of the public attack on her character.

"I don't think that one crime should trump all the good she's done in her life," Geragos said, citing Ryder's work with American Indian causes and with the Polly Klaas Foundation for missing children.

At one point, prosecutor Ann Rundle began an angry speech concerning numerous references to the Klaas Foundation. Mark Klaas has supported Ryder, who donated a reward after his 12-year-old daughter was kidnapped from her Petaluma home and slain in 1993.

"What's offensive to me is to trot out the body of a dead child," the prosecutor began. "I've heard this for over a year."

Geragos objected loudly and Ryder rose partly from her seat, glaring. The judge admonished Rundle to stick to the shoplifting case.

Outside court, Klaas said he was outraged by the reference to his daughter and credited Ryder with an unsolicited act of benevolence.

"Winona Ryder may be a double-felon, but she's a double-felon with a heart," he said.

The two-time Academy Award nominee was convicted last month of felony grand theft and vandalism for her infamous Dec. 12, 2001, shopping trip to the Beverly Hills store.

Ryder had numerous prescription drugs in her possession when she was arrested. One drug count was filed but it was eventually dropped when a doctor said he had prescribed it. The probation report revealed she also had a syringe in her purse.

"She had more medication in her purse than would be given to a person with a terminal disease," Rundle said.

Geragos responded that Ryder had "a pain-management problem" for some time. He angrily accused the district attorney's office of "doing everything they could to destroy this woman" and said he had tried repeatedly to settle the case without a trial.

During the trial, jurors were shown videotapes of Ryder wandering through the store's designer boutiques and taking a large number of items into dressing rooms.

Security staff testified that after Ryder was caught, she claimed a director had told her to shoplift to prepare for a movie role.

Ryder, who began her film career as a teenager in 1986, earned Academy Award nominations for "Little Women" and "The Age of Innocence." She also starred in the movie "Girl, Interrupted."