But the verdict obviously did not say that stolen cash ceases to be the property of the victim just because "cash is fungible". Police routinely seize money from cash thieves and return it to the victims. If the thief exchanged the cash for other valuables, without the merchant's knowledge, the cash then is "clean", but the valuables are still seized, as being conceptually the victim's property.
I didn't suggest that it said that. I am emphasizing fungibility specifically because most (maybe all) schemes I have seen that would add to bitcoin some kind of 'consumer protection' against theft would also make bitcoin non-fungibile, and useless as a currency. Additionally, NO currency that I am aware of has built-in consumer protections, and very likely
cannot have such without giving up fungibility, and therefore utility as a currency - and that is the specific issue dealt with by the decision in this case.
However, catching a bitcoin thief will be quite hard in general. The transaction that stole your bitcoins may have been issued from your own computer, automatically, by some self-erasing malware, while the hacker was not even online. You can point to the stolen coins in the blockchain, but the thief may leave the coins there for years, and no one can take them from him. Or he can hack into an old PC in Mongolia, and from there tumble the coins so thoroughly that it will be practically impossible to trace them to his person when he finally spends them.
This is true, but I don't think the bitcoin theft situation is in any meaningful way different than theft of cash in the form of any currency. Do you really think it would be easier to get your money back from some random thief that steals your wallet? I don't see the huge risk associated with bitcoin that doesn't exist with any other kind of cash, and that seems to be your thesis. I'm sure you will correct me if I am misinterpreting you.
AFAIK no theft of bitcoins by outside hackers has been solved, by the police or anyone else. In several cases of insider theft, the culprit was identified with high probability, but I don't know of any case where the evidence was sufficient to get a conviction.
As far as I know, this is true also - but bitcoin is still very new. I'm sure that you can find similar cases where cash money was stolen, and although there was a suspect who's guilt in the theft was deemed highly likely, sufficient legal proof for prosecution/recovery was not found.