Fired Judge Defends Arrest Warrant for Teen with Overdue Library DVD
House of Flying Daggers:
See trailer here.
A fired Colorado municipal judge is defending his decision to issue an arrest warrant for a teen with an overdue library DVD.
James Kimmel, who had served as a municipal judge for nearly 30 years, was fired Tuesday by the Littleton, Colo., City Council, the Denver Post reports. Council members cited the DVD decision as one of the reasons for the dismissal.
The teen, 19-year-old Aaron Henson, was pulled over for speeding in January and arrested when police noted the outstanding warrant. Henson spent almost eight hours in jail, the Post story says.
Kimmel told 9News.com that he doesn’t regret issuing the warrant because the library loses thousands of dollars a year when materials aren’t returned. “I think that if people understand their ramifications for not returning materials, they will return them, and I was trying to keep the city from having further losses,” he said.
Kimmel said he wasn’t aware that Henson had returned the DVD, Sony’s “House of the Flying Daggers,” before his arrest. The library notified the judge in a letter that the DVD had been returned, the Post says, but Kimmel told 9News.com that the letter never reached his desk.
Kimmel issued the warrant when Henson didn’t show up in court. Council members said Kimmel issued the warrant even though Henson was never officially served with a summons to appear in court. They said there were 71 other instances in which a warrant was issued but not properly served.
Kimmel told 9News.com that he has long been concerned about warrants that were not properly vacated or issued.
For his part, Henson said he was sorry to see the judge lose his job. “He’s a great judge,” Henson told the Denver Post. “I heard a lot of good things about him. I honestly don’t want them to fire him over this.”
