An Overdue ‘Sabrina The Teenage Witch’ VHS Tape From 1999 Led To Federal Charges Against An Oklahoma Woman

[laylalex 7,300]

Quote

 

The New York Times shared a wild story on Monday of a Norman, Oklahoma, woman who ended up with a bit of a legal mess after failing to return a VHS based on an Archie Comics character. Caron Scarborough Davis had a 21-year-old warrant out for her arrest filed by a now-shuttered movie rental store.

Prosecutors said that Ms. Davis had failed to return a copy of “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” a television sitcom that aired from 1996 to 2003. She rented the tape from a video store in Norman, Okla., in 1999, according to court documents.

She was charged with embezzlement of rented property, and a warrant was issued for her arrest in March 2000. The store where she rented the tape, Movie Place, closed in 2008, according to KOKH Fox 25 in Oklahoma.

 

https://uproxx.com/tv/overdue-sabrina-the-teenage-witch-federal-charges-oklahoma/

 

The better article is in the NYT (which is linked to in the Uproxx piece) but I know many of you find it completely unreliable, so I posted to a more trustworthy source: Uproxx.  

[Ban Hammer 13,485]

she should be jailed for watching it......  

[Dashinka 24,732]

Did she rewind?

[laylalex 7,300]

Just now, Dashinka said:

Did she rewind?

It would only be kind.

[Dashinka 24,732]

1 minute ago, laylalex said:

It would only be kind.

The story does seem a little fishy though.  So the warrant was issued in 2000, but she only found out in 2020/2021 via the Oklahoma DMV.  Presumably OK does not issue DLs for 21 years, so I am surprised this did not come up sooner.

[laylalex 7,300]

1 minute ago, Dashinka said:

The story does seem a little fishy though.  So the warrant was issued in 2000, but she only found out in 2020/2021 via the Oklahoma DMV.  Presumably OK does not issue DLs for 21 years, so I am surprised this did not come up sooner.

I think it was triggered by her wanting to change her name on her DL in Texas, where she lives now. My best guess is that when she moved to Texas, this kind of information wasn't shared between TX and OK because... 1999. Then she probably renewed and renewed in TX in her maiden (or previous) name, which meant the DMV in TX wouldn't be checking anything about her identity beyond "is this a renewal of the same info." But when she had to change info, the TX DMV might have asked something like "have you ever had a DL in another state in another name" or did a basic background check and BOOM the warrant in OK.

 

It's just a guess, but this matches up with my own experience of how weird and inefficient DMVs are in CA and RI. 

[yuna628 9,700]

Some people have nightmares of walking into a room naked... me I have bad dreams about overdue library books, so I can relate. Still seems terribly excessive. Did the store not try to get in contact with her back in the day?

[laylalex 7,300]

35 minutes ago, yuna628 said:

Some people have nightmares of walking into a room naked... me I have bad dreams about overdue library books, so I can relate. Still seems terribly excessive. Did the store not try to get in contact with her back in the day?

No one seems to know, and the store closed over a decade ago so 🤷‍♀️

 

This has a satisfactory ending, even though it probably caused the woman no end of worry and some $$$ to lawyers to make it go away.

[TBoneTX 45,918]

This whole thing is a First-World problem.