Some may say justice is served, while others may believe the punishment is too harsh for the crime, even one of this scale. Richard Finley, owner of Classic American Street Rods near Galveston, Texas, has appealed his felony theft conviction for property theft greater than $300,000, reports The Auto Wire. He is currently serving a 60-year prison sentence.
Finley was arrested in 2023 for mishandling customers’ classic cars and the money to work on them. According to ABC 13, his business specialized in engine upgrades, swapping engines out for more modern ones, with improved power and reliability. But rather than performing the work, Finley kept the cars, along with various car parts valued at about $2 million, along with nearly $500,000 he had been paid to perform the work. Another part of Finley’s scheme was taking parts off the cars that had been entrusted to him, then selling those parts to unsuspecting customers. Finley had moved the cars out of his shop to various off-site locations, but the long arm of the law caught up with him at a storage unit containing 24 cars, which have since been returned to their owners.
At the trial, which took place in December 2025, prosecutors called 28 of Finley’s 72 victims to testify against him. They told similar stories of being asked to pay large amounts of money for the work up front, then the work not being done for months, or even years. Officials said Finley would lie about the status of the work when customers confronted him. It took only a week for a jury to find Finley guilty. In January 2026, Judge Jeth Jones sentenced him to 60 years in prison and to pay nearly half a million dollars in restitution to the victims.
The right to appeal
On exactly what grounds Finley is appealing, we don’t know. While his lawyers reportedly filed an appeal the same day he was convicted, they have still not filed their opening brief, despite multiple extensions to do so.
It may seem that an appeal would be a waste of time, given the amount of evidence presented against Finley. An appeal is not a new trial, though, according to the Department of Justice. Instead, it looks for legal errors in the trial record, or mistakes the judge or prosecution may have made. Finley may also be appealing for a reduced sentence. 60 years is a long time, almost certainly the rest of Finley’s life — he’s now 51 years old. And what Finley did was wrong, but killing someone for pulling into the wrong driveway is arguably much worse, and the shooter may serve as little as 25 years for that.
Some, such as Finley’s customers, may feel this long sentence is perfectly fair, especially after having their classic cars stolen. As Sammy Davis, Jr. said, “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.” But there’s definitely a gap between Finley’s sentence and the sentences (or fines) leveled against other thieves we’ve seen in recent years. While the judge who presided over his case considered 60 years a reasonable sentence, an appeals court may see it differently.
