Sanity check on a stolen property accusation
criminal defense attorney Texas Aug 14, 2026
Location: Texas Background: My SO ("Jazz") allowed a friend ("Bob") of hers to crash at her apartment for several months when he had nowhere else to go. About four months ago, Bob got arrested for violating a protective order from his ex, and he either couldn't or wouldn't post bail, so he's been in jail ever since. So that left Jazz with a bunch of his stuff sitting at her apartment. Now, they've been in regular contact ever since. Bob asked a while back about some items from Jazz's apartment related to his legal defense; specifically a laptop computer, an old phone, and some paperwork. He suggested that either another friend of his ("Nick") or maybe his cousin could come pick the stuff up. This stuff has been set aside ever since then - for something like three months now. Despite repeated messaging, Nick never gets to the point of proposing a time to come get it. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, yesterday Nick messaged Jazz and threatened to file a police report for the "stolen property" if she didn't either provide a tracking number or a "concrete plan" to hand it off. Now from where I sit, we're doing our duty here. We've offered repeatedly to be available to hand off the stuff any time, day or night. It's not like there have been a bunch of instances where Nick says "hey can I come by this evening" and we declined, or anything like that. I guess the question is whether we have an obligation to go out of our way to hand this stuff off. It feels like the expectation has become for Jazz to do the work to get this to Nick, either by paying for shipping or taking her time to bring it to the address Nick provided yesterday. But it seems strange to me that this obligation falls entirely on her. I assume that even if that report did get filed and the cops showed up, it'd just be a case of "it's all right here, same place it's been for months" and nothing would come of it, but that's where the sanity check comes in.
