Jails Are Full Of the Wrongfully Arrested
Sir William Blackstone said, “better that 10 guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”
America’s justice system was created with this in mind. Throughout a criminal trial, there are plenty of points for the state to fail, be it during a police investigation or the trial.
But that is an ideal.
The reality is that innocent people go to jail all the time, based on spurious evidence gathered from warrants granted with manufactured probable cause.
The systems that make up the justice system–police, district attorneys, jails, and probation departments–have begun to fray around the edges. They take shortcuts to simplify their life and increase their numbers to make their department look more successful.
And the community they are supposed to protect pays the price.
What Is False Arrest?
It is important to understand what wrongful arrest actually is because not all bad arrests are wrongful arrests. For instance, if a person lies and tells the police that you committed a crime and the police arrest you, it is not wrongful arrest–but it is a bad arrest.
For an arrest to be a false arrest, a police officer must act without authority or beyond the scope of their power. This could include:
- Manufacturing probable cause for an arrest warrant
- Planting contraband or other illegal items on your person
- Malicious arrest
- Arrests that involve illegal searches and seizures
- An arrest based on a coerced admission of guilt
- An arrest involving an unreasonable use of force
Wrongful arrest cases are very fact-dependent. In the end, you have rights that protect you from malicious actions by police and prosecutors. If they violate those rights, you may have the basis for a wrongful arrest lawsuit.
Unreasonable Use Of Force–The Most Common Wrongful Arrest
The Fourth Amendment protects you from “unreasonable use of force” in the course of an arrest, detainment, investigation, or seizure. If in the course of a traffic stop, a police officer uses unreasonable force then your civil rights may have been violated.
If in the course of an arrest, your civil rights were violated then you have been wrongfully arrested, and unreasonable use of force is one of the most common causes of wrongful arrest.
We are seeing more and more cases of unreasonable use of force in the news and in our office. While most law enforcement officers adhere to the law, the power police have sometimes attracts those who are ill-suited to wield it.
