Mistaken Identity and Revenge We are an imperfect bunch, humans that is. We make a lot of mistakes and mistaken identity rears its ugly head more times than we would like to think about. One place where it does some of the worst damage is in criminal cases, where the wrong person is convicted of a crime. One poor guy looked so much like the guilty party no one believed him when he said he didn’t commit the crime. This guy served 17 years in jail on a case of mistaken identity. He was finally released and exonerated on June 8, 2017 after serving most of his 19-year sentence. He had been convicted of aggravated robbery. It turned out the real guilty party was sent to the same prison and when authorities realized they both looked almost identical, they looked into the case and finally released him. You have got to see how much alike these two people looked and how much more similar they must have looked 17 years ago. The following address has the photos of both men, One of the problems is witness recollections. It has been proven witness identifications are not always the best and police find this out all the time, especially when there is more than one witness to a crime. A lot of time the witnesses don’t agree on what the criminal looked like. One poor mother was in her front yard when a squad car pulled up and arrested her. She was just about to get her kids from school. They were arresting her for robbery. She couldn’t understand why. For five days she kept telling the authorities she was innocent. Her husband had to bail her out. It took him five days, because he had to borrow the money. She lived in Colorado, but a woman with the same name who lived in Oklahoma was the one they should have arrested. The woman’s name was Christina FourHorn the one they had the warrant for was named Christin Fourhorn. Attorneys with the Civil Liberties Union said the problem of mistaken arrests is ongoing. An assistant high school football coach was arrested on a domestic battery charge. He pleaded his innocence, but was thrown into jail anyway. He wasn’t even allowed a bond and had to sit in jail. When his defense attorney arrived, he investigated the case and realized the man had been out of town at the time of the crime and went to a judge with the evidence. The judge released the coach on a bond. For several days he had to stay on leave from his job until finally an assistant district attorney dropped the case, because they couldn’t find his accuser or a witness, the accuser’s sister. This type of case is one where a person lies about a crime for some reason, which many times is to get even with a husband or wife. Besides mistaken identity, revenge is a strong reason for false imprisonment. One of the great things about our time is the discovery of DNA. By 2013 170 people who were in prison for crimes they didn’t commit were released, because of DNA evidence which proved they were not the criminals. This was thanks to the Innocence Project. One of the problems in this country is we have the highest number of prisoners in the world. It is believed about one person in twenty-five is probably innocent. In 2015 149 people were released from jail or cleared of crimes they had been charged with, because it was proven they didn’t commit the crime. Here is a scary fact, many prisoners on death row have been proven innocent. Since 1963 to 2017 there have been 161 proven innocent. I don’t think we could imagine what these people must have went through knowing they were going to be executed for something they didn’t do. Steve Manning was convicted in 1993 and had his charges dismissed in 2000 and was released from death row inside an Illinois prison. He had been arrested and convicted of the death of a trucking company owner and sentenced to death. He had been convicted on the false testimony of an informant which later was found to be untrue. This is the problem with taking the world of others who are charged and will say anything to get lesser sentences or released. One of the strange things is the number of falsely accused people being convicted and are found to be innocent is increasing almost every year. There is a national register of exonerations and when I checked it as of the date of this article, it stated more than 18,750 years were lost. That would be the total so far of people who were exonerated after serving prison time for crimes they didn’t commit. It is an interesting site and if you want to see it the address is below, A lot of folks wonder if people who are released after being found innocent get compensated. Michael Graham served 14 years on Louisiana’s Death Row for a double murder he didn’t commit. When he was found innocent, he was given ten dollars and a coat. Is this fair? Certainly not. Even if they were given minimum current wage it would be something and I think they deserve far more for pain and suffering. There is a movement to try and get compensation for these people. There are some states which do not compensate and they are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming. Other states’ compensation ranges from low to meaningful such as Texas which provides $80,000 per year plus an annuity in the same amount. The truth is no amount of money can heal a ruined life. |
