22 October 2008

Arrested for keeping a football that landed in her yard

This story has been all over the internet, including the rap sheet on The Smoking Gun. Here's a summary from her local newspaper:
BLUE ASH – An 89-year-old woman arrested for not giving neighborhood children their football back after it landed repeatedly in her yard said today she'll return the ball.

But not right away.

"That's my only way of getting through to these children," Edna Jester said. "I'll give it back to them later, but not right now."

…Officers were called about 6:30 p.m. Thursday to her home by one of the children’s fathers, Blue Ash Police Capt. James Schaffer said.

The football apparently was thrown into Jester’s yard, and it wasn’t the first time, he said. The issue has been an ongoing dispute in the neighborhood, he said.

When police asked Jester to return the ball to the children, she refused. They warned her twice she would be charged if she did not cooperate, Schaffer said. They tried to give her a citation, but she refused to sign for it, he said.

Left with no other choice, he said, officers placed her in the back of a cruiser, took her to the police station and booked her…

The potential maximum penalty for a petty theft conviction in Ohio is six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. Schaffer said he suspects the mayor or presiding magistrate will take into account her age and lack of criminal record when the case comes up.

Tanis said he never wanted Jester to be arrested. “I just wanted the ball back,” Tanis said. “My son paid for the ball with his own money.”

Tanis said she has kept about 10 balls – basketballs and soccer balls – belonging to his children that went into her yard. Jester said she has kept only three.
At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon who mutters "keep off my lawn," I'm with the lady on this one. But more importantly I view this case as an abuse of the legal system and the police officers, who even in a small town must have better things to do with their time than to retrieve lost footballs. Certainly the court system doesn't need to be burdened by cases such as this.

The case has elicited the usual spectrum of comments and rants on Reddit.

The (unrelated) image embedded below offers a slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestion for an alternative method of dispute resolution.

3 comments:

  1. She got what was coming to her. Whilst she may be irritated by the children that actually play outside: she had every chance to either a. let them get the ball or b. return it. Then she was given every chance to avoid arrest.

    She CHOSE to be arrested because she was at that point STEALING. Pure and simple, there is no granny clause in keeping someone else's property.

    You have to choose your battles and that's what she wanted to go against... the justice system. She could have returned the football and negotiated/fought with the neighbors at another time.

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  2. Or she could have gone to a JP or Judge and gotten a restraining order against the children. There were a lot of ways of dealing with this. As far as the police were concerned, they did everything by the book. I know, I've been a cop and sometimes some people have got their minds set on going to jail.

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  3. Actually, since the ball(s) where on her private property, she has very good legal claim to the balls. Sure, she could be nice and let the kids come get them, but she doesn't have to.

    She did NOT steal the balls, the kids infringed on her private property rights.

    I guess she could argue that the balls were "given" to her.

    Personally, if that happened to the extent that it seems to, I would have probably started slashing the balls up and throwing them away.

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