Wrongfully jailed: Records detail more than 500 mistaken-identity arrests

Submitted by el cid on Tue, 2012-01-10 01:14

Story here. While I'm sure some women are subject to mistaken-identity arrests, all the sample stories given are about men. I suspect it's a "hidden problem" mostly men face and so is rarely discussed, such as paternity fraud. Excerpt:

'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.'

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