Money and lawyer comes to mind.
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This happens all the time. A summons (often for a traffic violation) is sent to an address where the person hasnât lived for years. When they donât show up in court (because the summons did not reach them) a âbench warrantâ is issued by the judge. Years later they are whisked off to jail, where they may vanish into the system for months. My friend used to do public defender work (until the funding was slashed) and he would often point out to the judge that the state had spent upwards of $50K and largely destroyed someoneâs life over expired tags 5 years ago.
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Youâre thinking Return Receipt service (which requires that the letter be sent via Certified Mail. Certified gives you proof of mailing and you can track it through to delivery, but you donât get anything showing who it was delivered to and it doesnât have to be signed for. Return Receipt requires a signature for delivery and a copy of the signature slip gets sent back to you.
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Actually she did do something criminal according to Section 16-13-420 of the SC Code of Laws. Itâs a misdemeanor because of the low value of the item, but itâs still a criminal violation. Itâs probably intended to cover larger items like a rental car or leased furniture, but it still applies here. Stuff like this is why I think the rules ought to be changed to require proof of receipt, not merely proof of mailing with receipt assumed. That would eliminate all these cases where people didnât get the paperwork because it got misdelivered or lost (or even never delivered at all, remember all those cases where mail carriers were found to literally have storage units filled with mail they didnât want to have to admit to not delivering).
Oh, and just to make it worse, South Carolina is one of the two states that does not have a statute of limitations on criminal charges.
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From the description of certified mail from USPS: âFind out when your item was delivered or delivery was attempted. Requires the signature of the recipient.â Return receipt gives you a post card actually showing the personâs signature, but certified mail is still not something that just gets left in a mailbox.
âAre there no prisons?â asked Scrooge.
âPlenty of prisons,â said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
âAnd the Union workhouses?â demanded Scrooge. âAre they still in operation?â
âThey are. Still,â returned the gentleman, âI wish I could say they were not.â
âThe Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?â said Scrooge.
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Ha. In real places a place that rents videos has several options. Like requiring a $20 cash deposit per account in order to rent, or keeping a cc on file in order to rent, or a store can do both.
Unless the nice lady left a check as security & that check bounced when the store attempted deposit that surety, something is stupid wrong in places where this could even happen.
This should not be able to become anything more than a mark on her CBR, which it would not, since reporting would be throwing a few dollar more after⌠what did they lose? A VHS tape & all the remaining prospective rentals of that tape, of J-Lo?, in 2005? They didnât lose shit, they should have credited her account a dollar for hauling away trash from their store when they were still in business.
IMO even a small bounced check in those circumstances should not be able to become a warrant, that shit should be left civil/credit reporting shit as a cost/risk of that dying business model. Itâs a gross violation of human decency &, for those shitheels that care more about this part, a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars.
VHS rentals, possibly paper bank checks involved, J-Lo⌠maybe when my kids get a little older I will take them to this obvious shithole, tell them to look about them because this is 1991, kids.
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Oh and everyone thinking that the lady was duly notified of the warrant via certified mail USPS, naw.
A certified warrant doesnât mean that shit, though the way itâs reported the coppers/reports may want you to think that.
That shit just means the date whereby a magistrate certified the warrant giving the officers power of arrest based on the warrant. Cops mayâve want you think it means she had to have known, or they were just emphasizing that it was a legitimate outstanding arrest warrant. Fact is that they donât have any responsibility to make sure you know there is a warrant coming or when it goes into force. Thatâs your problem, not theirs.
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speedy trial violation
Their click counter subverts middle-clicking to open in a new tab, but still counts it as a click. I probably account for 5 or 6 of themâŚ
There may be something to that. There are some similarities to this case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggett_v._United_States. But, here the police actually served a warrant, which could make all the difference.
With the exception of Bernie Madoff, the bankster who robbed banksters.
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Only if it was a threesome with the 2000s j-Lo and the 1970s Jane Fonda.
Imagine how much worse it would have been for her if she called 911 as a witness to an accident on top of having that outstanding warrant.
I smell a Hollywood screenplay coming from recent headlines. A kafkaesque comedy.
Thatâs exactly what I thought. What business do the police have of collecting on behalf of a video rental business.
As far as I know, this should be a civil matter, in my printing business, over the years, Iâve had people bounce cheques, or not pay (and weâre talking thousands of dollars, not a few bucks for a videotape, and the police would laugh at us if we came to them, âit is a civil matter between you and your clientâ. The only time when they might actually do something is if the customer pays by cheque and then closes the account - because thatâs fraud.
It was only served when she was arrested, until then it was an outstanding arrest warrant & not even certified mail, which was almost certainly not used & is no assurance of receipt anyway, can constitute serving a warrant.
The âcertified warrantâ talked about in the stories is the cops referring to the date the warrant was issued.
Lady was 18, she probably moved half a dozen times since then & probably had a solid 18-year old, capable of renting J-Lo ability to be unaware of a warrant.
Not that it matters, since a video rental store asking a magistrate for a warrant via the local po-po is about stick stone stupid anyway.
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Anyone at the address can sign for certified mail & in practice that includes neighbours, possibly cats. Recipient is any warm body, Addressee is the real deal.Certified is only any good for sending something someone actually wants & expects to receive.
Postal service in general has deteriorated quite a bit in the last 30 years tho. When I last lived in the states my post person asked me once why I was writing âRTSâ & âNATAâ on letters addressed to previous tenants. I stupidly blurted out what those mean, he sez âYeah, thanks, I know, just throw them away, okay?! Christ.â
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ok, in the UK, we would tend to assume that if youâve been to jail, that means youâve served a custodial sentence. a night in the cells is, well, just a night in the cells. if you said youâd been in jail because you spent one night in the cells, youâd get mocked somewhat. i take it jail has a slightly different meaning in the US?
Oh, so thatâs why we got a patsy!
