Dad Disciplines Kid by Taking iPhone Away, Lands in Jail

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 01 Feb 2016

When children misbehave and you take their phone away as punishment, you don’t think it might land you in jail, do you? Unfortunately, that’s precisely what happened to this Texas dad.

It’s a weird tale about a family’s ugly dispute over an iPhone, dispute that needlessly escalated, landing the dad in jail and destroying the relationship with his daughter. I want to say the story has a happy end, but that really isn't the case. Here’s how the whole thing went.

A dad disciplines his daughter, takes her iPhone away

This story’s protagonist is Ronald Jackson, a 36-year-old dad from Grand Prairie, Texas. The story begins in late September 2013, when Jackson’s daughter was 12. At the time, Jackson uncovered some disturbing texts on his daughter’s iPhone 4. What was so disturbing about the texts? According to Mashable, they revealed the 12-year-old daughter was trying to organize an attack on another minor. And according to The Washington Post, the daughter shot a text to a friend saying that "I don’t like his ratchet girlfriend or her kids."

Upon uncovering the inappropriate text(s), Jackson took his daughter’s iPhone 4 away as punishment. No biggie, right?

“I was being a parent. You know, a child does something wrong, you teach them what’s right,” Jackson told CBS. “You tell them what they did wrong and you give them a punishment to show that they shouldn’t be doing that.”

Mom reacts, says the phone was stolen

This is the part of the story where you meet Michelle Steppe, the girl’s mom. Some sources says Steppe is Jackson's ex-wife, other sources say Ronald Jackson and Michelle Steppe were never married. What matters is that the two share custody of their daughter and that both of them have started new families, with Steppe's current partner being a Grand Prairie police officer. According to Steppe, Jackson didn't become a part of his daughter's life until she was seven.

How do you think Steppe reacted when she found out that Jackson had punished their daughter by taking away her iPhone? She called the cops! Her rationale being that the phone is her property and “you can't take someone's property, regardless if you're a parent or not.”

A few hours later, Jackson got a knock on his door. It was the cops, asking for the phone back. Jackson refused and the situation took a turn for the worse.

The leghty legal battle over an iPhone

Jackson confiscated the iPhone during his visitation time, in September 2013. Once Jackson took the phone away, the daughter went to a friend's house and called her mom. The cops were sent to Jackson's home to try and get it back. When Steppe came to pick up her daughter, she asked for the phone back. Jackson declined..

Three months after the iPhone incident, Jackson received a citation in the mail. He was charged with “theft of property less than $50 in value”, a Class C misdemeanor.

In January 2014, the city attorney’s office offered Jackson a plea deal if he returned the iPhone. Jackson refused, hired an attorney, and asked for a jury trial in municipal court.

The city attorney’s office dropped the case but not the battle. They refiled it as a more serious Class B misdemeanor, which is punishable by 6 months in jail and a $2,000 fine.

A warrant was issued in April 2015. At 2AM, in the middle of the night, the cops arrested Jackson at his home and took him to jail, where he spent the night. Jackson got out of jail the following day, after posting a $1,500 bail.

The whole thing eventual got to trial. The two-day trial ended last week, on Tuesday, January 26, 2016. The verdict: not guilty. Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Lisa Green ordered the jury to find Jackson not guilty after ruling that the state failed to present sufficient evidence to continue the case.


The aftermath

Steppe says the court verdict’s is confusing, because she is the one who bought the phone and the plans were under her name.

The daughter, said Steppe, is devastated and has even wrote Jackson a letter, asking him to relinquish his parental rights.

Jackson said that this whole ordeal has alienated him from his daughter and her mother, making any relationship with the two impossible.

Cameron Gray, Jackson’s lawyer, said he plans to file a federal complaint for civil rights violations for the way Jackson was treated by the Grand Prairie Police Department and the city attorney’s office.

Detective Lyle Gensler with Grand Prairie said officers made several attempts to recover the phone, that they don’t like to see such situation get into the criminal justice system, and that it would have been better if the two adults had worked it out among themselves.

What about the daughter’s iPhone? Jackson still has it!


TL;DR? Watch this!





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