> On Wednesday, the DA's office said after reviewing McBride's case, they've decided to dismiss it.
I feel like she's owed damages, not just dismissal.
What motivates a DA to charge someone with a felony over a VHS tape?
A similar situation is when DAs stack on extra charges for a crime. The addon charges almost never make sense to the actual crime too, it always reads more like a gotcha. It turns what should be a Class C misdemeanor into a Class A, extraordinary fines, and jail time.
Stories like this are infuriating. DA should be required to pay for 20 years of lost invested wages and missed career progression opportunities, alongside a hefty premium for the emotional distress caused by this issue.
The lack of accountability of public offices towards citizens is problematic. I think is a general apathy in government jobs. It doesn’t matter how incompetent you are, and how many people you hurt - you’ll never go “out of business,” tax payers will pay for your mistakes, and you won’t be held responsible for the impact of your actions. So why even try?
There ought to be some feedback loop that forces the public sector to improve itself.
Whole aspect that the media in question she rented out was a children TV show. So for her to be XXX crimed is certainly some grounds to explore for damages.
Imagine if kids in later life had to live with the a sense of guilt knowing that their parent could be in jail because the forgot to return a video tape they wanted to watch. Would make a now adult turn a whole childhood into latent anxiety worries and were does it end.
Usually the value of the property determines whether a property crime is a misdemeanor or felony. Anyone happen to know what the dividing line was in Oklahoma back then?
A VHS tape could quite well be a lot more expensive than you would expect. If the studio expected that a tape would be mostly rented by consumers rather than bought by consumers they would often price it very high.
It’s almost as if the justice system is designed to protect the owners of capital... same reason you can go to jail for shoplifting but not wage theft.
McBride said over the last 20 years, she's been let go from several jobs without being given a reason why. She told FOX 25, now, it all makes sense. "This is why... because when they ran my criminal background check, all they're seeing is those two words: felony embezzlement," McBride said.
Someone shared with me how they deal with this in Australia, and I wish they did that here in the US. Employers can't just run background checks and interpret the data any way they want.
You send the job description to the police, and they run the background check and just return the employer a "yes/no" as to whether the person is okay for the job description, based on the specifics of the job and the background.
Edit: Yes, there are concerns about doing this in the US. I thought it was worth sharing anyway, as there are probably changes you could make to get the "good" part of this working here.
While this is interesting, it seems really problematic that the police have the power to say “yes/no”. I guess this is a matter of trust, and and given the...issues...with US law enforcement, it’s hard to imagine them getting this right.
In Dutch companies it’s done by Justis, a separate government agency that basically tells companies if you’re fit to do a certain job.
It’s based on what job you’re going to perform, so people that have money laundering convictions probably are still allowed to volunteer for the local Boy Scouts.
There are several levels and categories and it’s usually returned within a few days.
This is one of the most awful things of the current state justice systems around the world: persecution of victimless and minor crimes.
In the came of victimless crimes, well, just get rid of it!
In the case of minor crimes, reparation should be a priority, instead of punishing the actors. It's even better not to persecute than waste a lot of resources in a case (what would be completely inadmissible if we were talking about private justice).
Do you honestly think this will ever lead to a prosecution with significant jail time rather than the news being spectacular as always?
The worst that will happen in this case is the lawyers coming to an agreement that the suspect will pay the late fee and the case be dropped as the defence can surely convince the prosecution that wasting money of this is in no one's interest.
As for victim-less crimes, they exist because despite most people chanting that they do not want them, they in fact do want them, but simply are convinced there is an actual victim in the cases where they want them.
How was this allowed to go for 20 years without her knowing or facing the charges? What options does she have? Hasnt she been deprived of a right to speedy trial, leaving a lifetime of troubles for lost wages?
It feels like they're dropping the charge because there's no reasonable prospect of a conviction. After twenty years all the employees, and records, for the video shop have gone. There's no evidence.
This does make me wonder how many other similar cases are floating around.
The thing I don’t understand is why she was never formally charged. How do they go 20 years and never let her know in any way she’s charged with a felony. I could understand if it was a parking ticket, but not a felony.
I would think, more importantly, how many more people were charged for felony embezzlement for failing to return a video rental in Norman, Oklahoma, 20 years ago without their awareness? What motivated that chain of events?
This whole story needs some gravity, and more than what the local news station is giving it.
This highlights one of the hazards of a highly-automated future. A reason to put judges, purses, and other humans into the mix is to look for injustices and give people the right to make ad hoc exceptions.
If a mechanical process were to, say, photograph you at a red light camera, ticket you, and perhaps automatically take the funds from your account you might have no recourse. And once we have such a can imagine worse with opaque ML models and few to no humans in the loop.
Of course the system we have is also ripe for abuse, and can be unthinkingly rigid as well (think of “Brazil”). But better than full automation.
This exact thing is already happening with internet corporations. Google and Facebook can literally take away most of your digital life for you doing nothing wrong, and you'll have no recourse to get it back. You'll be hitting a wall of faceless automated replies saying that "your account will not be reinstated at this time and this decision is final".
To disagree; this highlights that manual systems are flawed, have inappropriate priorities - or at best have inappropriate resources in the process things manually.
Imagine, if instead of a prosecutor adding this to a record, a computer did it and the prosecutor's office could spend time reviewing outstanding non violent charges.
I agree we need humans in the loop for things like the administration of justice.
But this is a case where humans _were_ in the loop yet acted like automatons themselves. They failed to apply the baseline level of judgment that would have stopped them filing felony charges for "embezzlement" of a VHS tape featuring a talking cat.
McBride said over the last 20 years, she's been let go from several jobs without being given a reason why. She told FOX 25, now, it all makes sense.
"This is why... because when they ran my criminal background check, all they're seeing is those two words: felony embezzlement," McBride said.
If she can prove that, I'm wondering if anyone can be held liable for damages?
I'm surprised no one else in response has brought up notification requirements for background checks:
"...if the employer thinks it might not hire or retain you because of something in the report, it must give you a copy of the report and a 'notice of rights' that tells you how to contact the company that made the report." -- https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/background-checks-what-jo...
The real story here is the countless number of times this woman and millions of others have been discriminated against in employment, education, finance, housing and other areas, without any notice, for the mere suggestion of some long past wrongdoing.
Wouldn’t a modern democracy, as we hold ourselves up to be, disallow the unfettered snooping into of ones past for most employment, housing, etc?
How often does the reverse happen? How often are ISP executives charged with felonies for hiding fees, misleading consumers, or charging for routers they never delivered? No, not consumers, consumer, singular, because it was one VHS tape, not thousands or millions affected.
Probably a bench warrant gone rogue over time. Surprised it didn't make its way into the NCIS system, ending up as a felony arrest related to a simple traffic stop.
Dispatchers and police don't have full access to the details of the warrant either. They see "felony" and immediately change the interaction protocol, as we have seen too often the past few years.
Ms. McBride will probably spend another ten years doing the "expunge" dance as well.
The charge on her record was felony embezzlement, which would totally freak me out if I saw it on a background check for an employee. Yes, maybe they could have asked her about it, but from a legal perspective it's safer for them to just dismiss her without explanation. That's not their fault, that's the way that the system is set up.
Wow... That TrustArc cookie preferences thing on their site sure is a piece of work. It takes 30+ seconds to completely load such that you can alter the preferences (or you can click allow all immediately), and then after you change it to turn off advertizing cookies, it goes through a slow percentage calculation. I gave up after 3 minutes, when it was at 64%.
It's quite obviously delaying as a dark pattern to make you give up and allow everything, but I wonder how legal that is?
Update: I left it running to see what would happen. Once the artificial delay completes, you're presented with an ominous warning:
"This page transmits information using https protocol. Some vendors cannot receive opt-out requests via https protocols so the processing of your opt-out request is incomplete. To complete the opt-out process, please click here to resubmit your preferences."
Clicking on that link brings you to another page on their site that basically does the same thing, except with the following warning:
"Some opt-outs may fail due to your browsers cookies settings. If you would like to set opt-out preferences using this tool you must allow third party cookies in your browser settings.""
All preferences are of course set to "Yes". Changing them to "no" and submitting again does the same artificial delay with percentage that slows down the closer it gets to 100% (and then sticks at 100% for good measure).
After this 5 minute process, it finally says my preferences have been saved, but with all these caveats, I wouldn't be surprised if it's tracking me anyway, using those warnings about browser settings as a fig leaf to hide behind.
[+] [-] kodah|4 years ago|reply
I feel like she's owed damages, not just dismissal.
What motivates a DA to charge someone with a felony over a VHS tape?
A similar situation is when DAs stack on extra charges for a crime. The addon charges almost never make sense to the actual crime too, it always reads more like a gotcha. It turns what should be a Class C misdemeanor into a Class A, extraordinary fines, and jail time.
[+] [-] xvector|4 years ago|reply
The lack of accountability of public offices towards citizens is problematic. I think is a general apathy in government jobs. It doesn’t matter how incompetent you are, and how many people you hurt - you’ll never go “out of business,” tax payers will pay for your mistakes, and you won’t be held responsible for the impact of your actions. So why even try?
There ought to be some feedback loop that forces the public sector to improve itself.
[+] [-] Zenst|4 years ago|reply
Imagine if kids in later life had to live with the a sense of guilt knowing that their parent could be in jail because the forgot to return a video tape they wanted to watch. Would make a now adult turn a whole childhood into latent anxiety worries and were does it end.
[+] [-] macjohnmcc|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TrackerFF|4 years ago|reply
"Tough on crime" sadly has a long and sordid history of similar convictions.
[+] [-] tzs|4 years ago|reply
A VHS tape could quite well be a lot more expensive than you would expect. If the studio expected that a tape would be mostly rented by consumers rather than bought by consumers they would often price it very high.
[+] [-] dls2016|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tyingq|4 years ago|reply
Someone shared with me how they deal with this in Australia, and I wish they did that here in the US. Employers can't just run background checks and interpret the data any way they want.
You send the job description to the police, and they run the background check and just return the employer a "yes/no" as to whether the person is okay for the job description, based on the specifics of the job and the background.
Edit: Yes, there are concerns about doing this in the US. I thought it was worth sharing anyway, as there are probably changes you could make to get the "good" part of this working here.
[+] [-] haswell|4 years ago|reply
The general concept is interesting, though.
[+] [-] gnur|4 years ago|reply
It’s based on what job you’re going to perform, so people that have money laundering convictions probably are still allowed to volunteer for the local Boy Scouts.
There are several levels and categories and it’s usually returned within a few days.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] avalys|4 years ago|reply
Presumably the police would have also considered an open warranty for felony embezzlement to be a "do not hire" situation.
[+] [-] gregd|4 years ago|reply
We can't even get police to stop murdering BBIPOC, why on earth would we want to give them the ability to say yes/no to anyone getting a job?
[+] [-] scarface74|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianwawok|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henvic|4 years ago|reply
In the came of victimless crimes, well, just get rid of it! In the case of minor crimes, reparation should be a priority, instead of punishing the actors. It's even better not to persecute than waste a lot of resources in a case (what would be completely inadmissible if we were talking about private justice).
[+] [-] Blikkentrekker|4 years ago|reply
The worst that will happen in this case is the lawyers coming to an agreement that the suspect will pay the late fee and the case be dropped as the defence can surely convince the prosecution that wasting money of this is in no one's interest.
As for victim-less crimes, they exist because despite most people chanting that they do not want them, they in fact do want them, but simply are convinced there is an actual victim in the cases where they want them.
[+] [-] cabaalis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gravypod|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|4 years ago|reply
This does make me wonder how many other similar cases are floating around.
[+] [-] amelius|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|4 years ago|reply
though, it could also be the case that prosecutors need an excuse to drop cases like this, and negative coverage in the media is a good one.
[+] [-] tims33|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lotsofpulp|4 years ago|reply
> Blau told FOX 25 Thursday that McBride will need to get her case expunged in order to clear her record moving forward.
Why would her record even need clearing if she was not convicted of anything.
[+] [-] keeglin|4 years ago|reply
This whole story needs some gravity, and more than what the local news station is giving it.
[+] [-] gumby|4 years ago|reply
If a mechanical process were to, say, photograph you at a red light camera, ticket you, and perhaps automatically take the funds from your account you might have no recourse. And once we have such a can imagine worse with opaque ML models and few to no humans in the loop.
Of course the system we have is also ripe for abuse, and can be unthinkingly rigid as well (think of “Brazil”). But better than full automation.
[+] [-] grishka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smileysteve|4 years ago|reply
Imagine, if instead of a prosecutor adding this to a record, a computer did it and the prosecutor's office could spend time reviewing outstanding non violent charges.
[+] [-] mshroyer|4 years ago|reply
But this is a case where humans _were_ in the loop yet acted like automatons themselves. They failed to apply the baseline level of judgment that would have stopped them filing felony charges for "embezzlement" of a VHS tape featuring a talking cat.
[+] [-] fortran77|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hirundo|4 years ago|reply
https://www.nlg-npap.org/absolute-immunity/
[+] [-] Ariarule|4 years ago|reply
"...if the employer thinks it might not hire or retain you because of something in the report, it must give you a copy of the report and a 'notice of rights' that tells you how to contact the company that made the report." -- https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/background-checks-what-jo...
[+] [-] newacct583|4 years ago|reply
Now, is it a just charge? Almost certainly not. But that's a question that courts have to answer, it's what they're for.
[+] [-] rovr138|4 years ago|reply
She could possibly go after the person she was dating and, if she had evidence he did it without her knowing, she could maybe sue him for lost wages.
[+] [-] atemerev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakelazaroff|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alex_young|4 years ago|reply
Wouldn’t a modern democracy, as we hold ourselves up to be, disallow the unfettered snooping into of ones past for most employment, housing, etc?
[+] [-] MikeUt|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sio8ohPi|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computers_Don%27t_Argue
[+] [-] johnohara|4 years ago|reply
Dispatchers and police don't have full access to the details of the warrant either. They see "felony" and immediately change the interaction protocol, as we have seen too often the past few years.
Ms. McBride will probably spend another ten years doing the "expunge" dance as well.
Lazy, unaccountable, and inexcusable.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] g8oz|4 years ago|reply
These criminal background checks are out of control. There has to be a smarter way of doing things.
[+] [-] LinuxBender|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colour|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lolinder|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dagaci|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstenerud|4 years ago|reply
It's quite obviously delaying as a dark pattern to make you give up and allow everything, but I wonder how legal that is?
Update: I left it running to see what would happen. Once the artificial delay completes, you're presented with an ominous warning:
"This page transmits information using https protocol. Some vendors cannot receive opt-out requests via https protocols so the processing of your opt-out request is incomplete. To complete the opt-out process, please click here to resubmit your preferences."
Clicking on that link brings you to another page on their site that basically does the same thing, except with the following warning:
"Some opt-outs may fail due to your browsers cookies settings. If you would like to set opt-out preferences using this tool you must allow third party cookies in your browser settings.""
All preferences are of course set to "Yes". Changing them to "no" and submitting again does the same artificial delay with percentage that slows down the closer it gets to 100% (and then sticks at 100% for good measure).
After this 5 minute process, it finally says my preferences have been saved, but with all these caveats, I wouldn't be surprised if it's tracking me anyway, using those warnings about browser settings as a fig leaf to hide behind.
[+] [-] gcatalfamo|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]