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IPFS News Link • Criminal Justice System

Wrongfully jailed: Records detail more than 500 mistaken-identity arrests in Denver in seven years

• Denver Post

More than 500 people were wrongly imprisoned in Denver's jails over seven years, with some spending weeks incarcerated or pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit before authorities realized they nabbed the wrong person, a federal court filing shows.

Civil-rights lawyers suing the city and county of Denver assert the documented mistaken-identity arrests "are the tip of the iceberg" and are an undercount of the true magnitude of the problem.

In one case a black man spent nine days in jail after he was arrested on a warrant for a white man wanted on a sex-crimes arrest warrant.

In another, authorities arrested an 18- year-old when they were searching for a man 30 years older.


2 Comments in Response to

Comment by James Eldridge (29618)
Entered on:

Better that many guilty persons escape unpunished than one innocent person should be punished. The reason is, because its of more importance to community, that innocence should be protected, then it is, that guilt should be punished. John Adams

Comment by Joe Tittiger (29500)
Entered on:

This happens every where.  I  had guns pointed at my head on a brown shirt America's most wanted warrant.  The guy they wanted was 20 years younger than me and the pigs because they have soverign immunity did not bother to verify that the warrant had been taken care of and I was not the guy.  The brainless goons on testosterone just wanted to play with their toys and put my life in danger:

 

http://jtittiger.blogspot.com/2010/11/why-does-law-enforcement-make-itself.html



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