A drunken evening at Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute won’t end with decades behind bars for museum visitor Michael Rohana, who accepted a plea deal for stealing a finger from one of China’s famous terracotta warrior sculptures at a gruesome party of Christmas.
Rohana is expected to plead guilty to interstate trafficking charges in federal court in Philadelphia on April 17, Philadelphia reports. Kyw Newsradio. The maximum penalty will be two years in prison and a fine of $20,000. That’s down from the 30-year prison sentence he previously faced for stealing and concealing a cultural heritage object from a museum. The first trial in the case ended in a mistrial when the jury could not agree on the verdict, and the second was delayed due to COVID.
The Franklin Institute exhibit, “Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperororganized with the Pacific Science Center in Seattle, featured 10 statues of life-size Terracotta Army warriors buried in the tomb of China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Rural farmers discovered a tomb, filled with some 8,000 soldiers from 210 to 209 BCE, in northwest China in the 1970s.
Rohana was just 24 when he attended a party at the Franklin Institute on December 21, 2017. During the event, he strolled through the museum’s galleries, which were unlocked, and slid in front of a pole rope blocking the entrance to enter the darkened exhibit.
View of the “First Emperor’s Terracotta Warriors” installation at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Photo courtesy of Franklin Institute, Philadelphia.
Video surveillance captured Rohana – wearing a Phillies baseball cap and bright green sweater – posing for a selfie with one arm wrapped around a 2,000-year-old sculpture known as the The Cavalier, which was insured at $4.5 million. As he walked away, Rohana appeared to snap something from the figure’s left hand and place it in his pocket.
It wasn’t until January 8 that the Franklin Institute noticed that the statue’s thumb was missing. A review of security footage, combined with credit card statements from guests who purchased tickets to the event, led an FBI investigation to pin Rohana — pun intended — as the culprit.
Friends he attended the party with later testified that he spoke during the car ride about taking the finger from the statue, and even shared an image of the terracotta thumb on Snapchat.
When FBI Special Agent Jacob B. Archer showed up at the Rohana, Delaware residence in February 2018, the suspect immediately confessed to his crime. Then he returned the stolen cipherwhich he kept tucked away in his bedroom desk drawer.
China was furiouswith Wu Haiyun, director of the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center, who lent the sculptures to the traveling exhibition, demanding that “the United States severely punish the author”, according to the BBC. (Philadelphia passed an official resolution apologize for the incident.)
Three months later, a federal grand jury indicted Rohana under the federal art theft law. When the case goes to a jury, the case resulted in a mistrial in April 2019, the jury was unable to reach a verdict. What made the case unique for an art theft proceeding was the absence of a financial motive.
Terracotta warriors from the tomb complex of Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang. Photo by Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images.
And the law only applied to works of art worth more than $5,000. Separated from the face, how much was the thumb worth on its own, really? Two expert witnesses offered very different assessments. Testifying on behalf of the prosecution, Michael Cohn claimed it was worth 5% of the sculpture’s total value, or $150,000; called by the defense, Lark E. Mason cited a figure of just $1,000.
When Rohana spoke up, he admitted he didn’t know why he stole the thumb.
“Every time I see this video now, I try to figure out, ‘What was going through your mind? What were you thinking?’ I don’t know how I could have been so stupid,” he said.
The jury had to ask: did an incident of impulsive booze-fueled vandalism really deserve the same punishment as a premeditated art robbery? Rohana’s attorney argued no.
“These charges were made for art thieves – think like Ocean’s Eleven Or Impossible missionCatherine C. Henry told jurors. “[Rohana] wasn’t in ninja gear sneaking around the museum. He was a drunken kid in an ugly, bright green Christmas sweater.
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