IN a final scene as dramatic as anything Hollywood could produce, a pale and shaking Winona Ryder was found guilty yesterday of grand theft and vandalism.

After a day of deliberations, a Beverly Hills jury that included Ms Ryder’s former boss concluded that the actress stole nearly $6,000 (£3,900) of designer clothes, handbags and accessories from the Saks Fifth Avenue store. It also found that she had vandalised the goods, including a $1,595 white Gucci dress, by using scissors to cut off security tags.

She will be sentenced next month and is expected to be put on probation.

The verdict — broadcast live on all television networks, supplanting coverage of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut — marked the end of a bizarre trial, which has seen more attention given to shoplifting charges than many murder cases.

It was also a triumph for the Beverly Hills District Attorney's office, which was determined to end its reputation for being soft on celebrities.

Camera crews have surrounded the courthouse since last week, while publications such as Women's Wear Daily have provided a day-by-day analysis of the designer outfits Ms Ryder wore to court. Yesterday she chose a purple jacket and had her hair pulled back with an Alice band.

The actress, who spent her 31st birthday in court last week, even suffered a broken arm when she was hit by a camera.

Yesterday she was clearly trying to fight back tears as the verdict sank in. Her defence lawyer, Mark Geragos, tried to provide some comfort.

Mr Geragos’s only success had been to convince the jury not to find his client guilty of a third count of burglary. In his closing argument he had suggested that Ms Ryder was the victim of an elaborate set-up by Saks. The prosecution was more blunt. “She came, she stole, she left,” Ann Rundle, the Deputy District Attorney, said. She dismissed the defence argument, saying it “could only have been written in Hollywood”.

But legal experts agreed that the three felony charges filed against Ms Ryder by the prosecution were extreme. According to one survey, not one of the 5,000 previous shoplifting cases in Beverly Hills have carried such heavy charges.

Ms Rundle said outside the court that she would not be seeking to have Ms Ryder jailed when she returns for sentencing on December 5. “This trial was never about jail time, we will not be asking for any jail time. We simply wanted Ms Ryder to take responsibility for her conduct.”

In one of the many twists to the case, the jury that convicted Ms Ryder included Peter Guber, the former head of Sony Pictures Entertainment, who was involved in three of her films: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Age of Innocence and Little Women.

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