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Comment by EpicEng | Hacker News Reader

Yes that sort of thing happens, but "often"? How often are we talking here? You make it sound like a common occurrence and I'm not convinced that's the case.

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Happened to me, so I can speak about this first hand.

I fit the description: I was between 5'3" and 5'11" and my skin color can be described as "coffee with a touch of milk."

Video evidence that showed, fifteen minutes before it happened, that I was 13km away at a wedding having dinner wasn't enough since I could have left immediately after the footage was taken and driven down.

I still have video evidence of the senior detective basically instructing the witness to select me out of a lineup. They also whispered to each other throughout which I only managed to hear thanks to some expensive headphones I had.

I made fake Facebook accounts and befriended all of the "witnesses" and victims. Beat the case on a technicality thanks to a post I found on Facebook by a eye witness.

I'd still be in jail right now 9.5 years later.

I'd say it happens extremely frequently, it's just that the people it happens to aren't as lucky as I am.

Wow. Have you written about this anywhere else? Glad you’re free!

Thank you.

It's not something I'm particularly proud of or something I talk about - outside of my immediate family no one really knows all of the details, and only a handful of people outside of my immediate family know about it. It's the most traumatic experience of my life and had significant consequences on my mental health that still affect me daily.

My blind optimism helped me through it, but it had really hurt my family too.

Understandable, it must've had a big impact.

Good luck and I'm glad the optimism paid off!

You agreed to the ID parade.

The general rule is not to talk to the police at all. Ask for an attorney if you're being detained; leave if not.

I didn’t agree to anything unless it was an order. This had the benefit of them requiring to have a senior officer review the request to make sure it’s actually necessary and lawful to order (such as when they requested a buccal swab).

The line-up I mentioned was a photo line-up, where they place one of my mugshots among a group of other photoshopped mugshots.

They arrested me in the first instance, then released me, then arrested me again and charged me after they had performed the photo line-up.

Some links to peruse:

https://www.innocenceproject.org/

https://www.innocenceproject.org/eyewitness-identification-r...

https://www.innocenceproject.org/overturning-wrongful-convic...

The National Registry of Exonerations:

CURRENTLY 2,481 EXONERATIONS

MORE THAN 21,890 YEARS LOST

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/browse.a...

Often enough. Like how many times is too many when we are talking about sending people away for years? If they find something that exonerates you, who is looking out for you, do you have the right to find evidence that clears you? Can you ask Google for such information? Anything they find can and will be used against you, and anything that clears you they are under no obligation to disclose. Does that sound like a fair bargain?

of course frequency matters. Yes, it's awful every time, but it's a whole lot worse for society if it happens 10,000 times a day as opposed to once every 5 years

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