Man jailed for confiscating his daughter's iPhone

A family's ugly dispute over an iPhone 4 has escalated into an embittered legal matter involving one arrest, a jury trial and a potential civil rights suit.

A Texas father was found not guilty of theft Tuesday for confiscating his daughter's cellphone as a punishment for sending "inappropriate" texts.

The case dates back to September 2013, when Ronald Jackson was charged with property theft after taking his daughter's iPhone 4. Jackson's lawyer, Cameron Gray, said his client's 12-year-old daughter had been trying to organize an attack on another minor, and that's why the phone was taken.

"My client never committed a crime," Gray told Mashable. "He was just trying to be a father."

A few hours after Jackson nabbed the iPhone, officers from the Grand Prairie Police Department showed up at his door and told him to turn it over. Jackson refused, according to police reports.

The situation appears to have snowballed from there.

“I didn’t want the police department telling me how to parent my child. It made no sense to me for them to show up and make a big deal out of something that was a small thing,” Jackson told CBS. “I couldn’t believe they would go to this extent for a cell phone. It didn’t seem right.”

The mother —  a wife of a Grand Prairie police officer who claimed to own the phone — disagreed.

Michelle Steppe told jurors that she called the police after her daughter's phone was taken because she paid for it, and she wanted to prove a point that "you can't take someone's property, regardless if you're a parent or not," WFAA8 reported.

Jackson still refused to hand over the phone, saying it was his name on the cellphone's contract, Gray said.

A few months later, after Jackson turned down a plea deal that included turning over the phone, the Dallas County District Attorney's office upped the charges to a Class B misdemeanor, which in Texas is punishable by a $2,000 fine and six months in jail. In April 2015, Jackson was arrested at his home at 2 a.m. and was taken into custody. He spent 1 night in jail.

After a two-day trial, Dallas County Criminal Court Judge Lisa Green instructed the jury to find Jackson not guilty after ruling that the state's case lacked evidence. But according to Jackson's lawyer, the case is far from settled.

He plans to file a federal complaint for civil rights violations, citing alleged unlawful treatment by the city attorney's office and the Grand Prairie Police Department, including individual officers. Gray claims the entire legal affair is the result of the police department working out its personal bias against his client.

According to Jackson, the legal dispute has rendered any future relationship with his daughter, who also testified in court, and her mother impossible.

"I have to separate myself from them," Jackson told WFAA8 "I can't ever have a relationship with them again." 

Gillian Edevane