Is a screwdriver a burglar’s tool?
A screwdriver is a screwdriver - until the circumstances say otherwise. Possession-of-burglar’s-tools statutes criminalize ordinary hardware plus criminal intent, and the intent is proven by everything around the pocket it was found in.
The statutes, plainly.
Every state has the offense: New York’s PL 140.35 (possession of burglar’s tools - a class A misdemeanor) covers any tool commonly used for breaking into premises or vehicles, possessed under circumstances evincing intent to use it criminally. California’s PC 466 lists fifteen-odd implements - picks, crowbars, slim jims, tension bars - plus the catch-all, as a misdemeanor. The federal system has no general equivalent; this is state-court territory. The design of every version is identical: the tool is legal, the intent is the crime, and the intent is inferred.
How a screwdriver becomes evidence.
Context converts hardware: a flathead in a contractor’s van at noon is a tool; the same flathead in a waistband at 3 a.m. in a parking structure, next to a window-punch and gloves, is Exhibit A. Prosecutors build the inference from time and place, companion items (gloves, flashlights, pry bars, shaved keys), behavior before the stop (trying door handles on camera), prior record, and statements. The charge rarely travels alone - it rides with attempted burglary, vehicle tampering, or trespass, and it frequently survives as the plea-down count when the bigger charge wobbles.
The defense: intent has to be proven, not assumed.
These cases are beatable precisely because the element is mental. Lawful purpose evidence - the trade, the job site, the employer letter, the toolbox the screwdriver came from - collapses the inference. The stop itself gets litigated: burglar’s-tools counts are born in street stops and car searches with their own Fourth Amendment problems, and suppression takes the tools and the case together. And the “commonly used for breaking” element has real edges - courts have rejected stretching it over everyday items without genuine circumstantial support. A misdemeanor that implies you are a burglar is worth fighting like the felony it whispers about: the consultation is free.
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