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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Falsely Accused!




I can think of nothing more horrid for a person to experience than to be falsely accused of committing a crime. History books are full of stories of people, particularly men, who have been falsely accused, tried and convicted, and in far too many cases, have been put to death for having committed no crime at all.

My lack of faith in the criminal justice system in most countries of the world is my reason for standing firmly against the death penalty. Once an innocent person gets slipped through the system due to mistakes, lack of funding for a high priced defence,
or prosecutors who are out to make a name for themselves at the expense of even the innocent, time spent in jail is enough of an obscenity. At least if the injustice is discovered the individual can be released. But once we’re dead, we stay dead for a very long time.

I once found myself under suspicion of having committed a very serious crime, as were a great number of other young men in my age group and profile. A woman claimed that she had been raped, but what had actually taken place was that her husband came home from his work earlier than usual at night, and surprised she and her lover. The lover ran from the house and she tried to cover up her infidelity by crying rape.

She was taken seriously and a search was undertaken to try and find the person seen by her husband fleeing the scene. Unfortunately for me I lived in the same neighbourhood on my own, and that night I had been to a film alone and was returning home at about the time her lover was making good his escape. My neighbours would have been able to say at about what time I arrived home, and to make matters worse I could have fit the description.

In the end the truth came out and the matter was abandoned, but not before a lot of resources were committed to the case, and the lives of a lot of people had been turned upside down. My own experience was stressful in the extreme. The detective who interviewed me later said that he was fairly sure that in me he had found the guilty party, and it was his feeling that he should have arrested me from the start. However, there was something that held him back from doing so because he was aware that if he was wrong the damage would have been done, and my life would have been ruined.

I would like to think that he held back because he had the common sense to doubt that there had been a crime committed in the first place. But the search placed a number of young men under the spotlight. I think the police found it fascinating to uncover so many tales of who was sleeping with whom in secret.

In all, I had to tell the story of my movements on that night three times under very formal circumstances in a police station. On the last occasion they let slip the nationality of the husband. From that I was able to tell that he was a guest worker from overseas, probably working in an hotel, doing double duty in the evening, first in the dining room, and then moving on to the nightclub. I was able to explain that as the incident that supposedly occurred was at the end of the tourist season, he had probably not been needed in the nightclub and had simply come home early and surprised his cheating wife.

The fourth time that I was called in to the police station it was to be given a formal apology and to be assured that it was all over. One woman had made the police and the public into fools, and tremendous resources had been wasted. Also, the greatest disservice had been done to every woman who might have a legitimate complaint in the future.

The stress that I experienced from trying to prove a negative took a great toll on me. I was facing ruin, not to mention loss of my freedom, no matter how short a period that might have been, or how long.

I hear people say all the time that if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear from the police. Such naïveté is wonderful. I can only hope for them that they are not personally rocked out of this state of being.

In the case that I have described here I am only too happy to agree that I did not become a victim of the system. But that is down to one young detective, whom I will never, ever forget for his compassion and concern for my well-being. Normally I would have been led off in handcuffs and thrown in jail. If it later turned out that it was all a mistake, well, that’s just too bad, innit!

Copyright © 2008 Eugene Carmichael