South Carolina woman arrested for failing to return DVD rented in 2005

I realized a while back that my copy of To Kill A Mockingbird is actually from my high school library (graduated in 1990).

If Bookman catches me, I may get the chair.

 

And by people bending the rules is one reason why old warrants like this end up not being served for nine years, further clogging up the system. The sheriff sent her multiple certified letters instructing her to turn herself in, and she did not. She was 100 percent aware this thing needed to be taken care of and she chose not to take care of it.

 

So what? What a bloody waste of time and money.

 

Every time there's a headline that says PERSON ARRESTED FOR SEEMINGLY INNOCUOUS ACTIVITY!!!!!

it always turns out to be "Person arrested for ignoring multiple court orders."

 

She's now spent a night in jail over this. Just make her watch the movie one more time and that seems like more than enough of a sentence.

 

Well odds of her being convicted of this are extremely low. I'm no expert on S.C. law, but we have a comparable criminal charge in N.C. (failure to return rental property).

From my experience, even when those warrants are served in a timely manner, proving the case is nearly impossible: Does the company have the appropriate records? Usually they don't. Can anyone at the company actually identify the defendant? Usually they can't. Does the company even want to proceed? Often they don't if they get paid some of what they're owed. Can the state prove the item was never returned? Often the record keeping at these places is terrible.

Now add in the complications of a business that no longer exists and the passage of nine years: Her only punishment will end up being that night in jail for failing to turn herself in on an old warrant that she knew existed and refused to deal with.

 

I agree with you that this sort of thing should be civil and not criminal, as would most of the lawyers who work in states where they have these kinds of criminal charges. The contracts these rental companies have people sign carry adequate damages penalties. The added criminal charge is used (abused) by rental companies to avoid having to hire a civil lawyer to collect on those contract damages and to leverage collection through the criminal justice system.

But S.C. has chosen to make this a crime - as have a few other states - and this woman was given plenty of notice that she had a matter needing to be resolved. Odds are, if she had turned herself in after that first - or even second - certified letter from the sheriff, she would have been released on a promise to appear and not spent a night in jail, and the charge would have been dropped if she paid for the value of the DVD to the rental company. Taking care of her business nine years ago would have avoided all this.

I'm somewhat surprised this even made the news. In the courthouse where I worked for a few years, this story could have been done 100 times over every year. "Man arrested on charge of failing to return tiller;" "Man arrested on charge of failing to return rims;" (Who rents rims by the way?) "Woman arrested on charge of failing to return couch," etc.

 

I think it's "statue."

 

Pretty amazing how this heinous criminal went 9 years in society without popping up on someone's radar, whether it's just a cop running tags in a parking lot or whatever.

 

Unreal that she spent a night in jail for not returning a video. But then again we are talking about South Carolina, so not exactly a shock.

 

It could have been the cops had checked but the warrants will typically have a range for how the police will extradite, so they could have checked, saw a warrant, then saw won't cross state lines or won't travel more than 50 miles, and it would have been done. The most the cops could have done then is told her she had a warrant and let her go about her business.