Judge Fired In The Case Of The Overdue DVD

Remember a few weeks back when we wrote of the Colorado teen who was arrested for an overdue DVD from his local library? There’s an update — the judge who issued the arrest warrant in the case has been fired.

According to the Denver Post, the judge had been given the offer to resign after nearly 30 years on the bench by the city council of Littleton, CO, but he refused so they sent him packing.

“I’m disappointed and saddened the situation has reached this stage,” one council member said.

Here’s the background: A 19-year-old kid borrowed a DVD of House of the Flying Daggers from his library and then failed to return it when it inadvertently got packed in with a bunch of boxes while he was moving to a new town.

Since the retail value of the DVD was over the library’s threshold for what they consider theft (as opposed to an acceptable loss), a summons was sent to the teen. However, he never received it because it had been sent to the wrong address.

So when the teen didn’t show up for the court appearance he didn’t know about, the judge issued an arrest warrant.

Problem is, the teen had coincidentally returned the video a week before the hearing and the library had sent a letter to the judge to let the court know about it.

Regardless, the teen was arrested a couple weeks later when we was pulled over for speeding and police noticed the outstanding warrant.

The nail in the judge’s coffin, as far as the city council was concerned, was when they looked through his actions in similar cases and found 71 incidents in which a warrant had been issued but had not been properly served.

But even the wrongfully arrested teen thought the judge deserved a second chance.

“He’s a great judge,” he said. “I heard a lot of good things about him. I honestly don’t want them to fire him over this.”

Littleton fires judge who issued warrant for overdue DVD

Thanks to Ken for the tip!

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