Is it alright to take the cash or coins that you occasionally find someone left behind at the self- checkout registers when shopping in Indiana?

In Williams v. State, the defendant was convicted of theft for taking the change a previous customer accidently left behind in a grocery store self-checkout station. The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed the conviction because Indiana’s theft statute does not criminalize the taking of lost or mislaid property. The Court noted that Indiana used to have a statute making it a crime for failing to take reasonable measures to restore mislaid property to its rightful owner, but that statute was repealed over forty years ago.