Atlanta woman wrongly imprisoned for 53 days because of name mix-up

[Old Fart]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/atlanta-woman-wrongly-imprisoned-53-days-because-name-144442562.html
 
An Atlanta woman says she was mistakenly imprisoned for 53 days because police confused her for someone else with the same name, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Atlanta's Channel 2 Action News report.
Teresa Culpepper says she called police to report that her truck had been stolen in August. But when they showed up at her home, they arrested her for aggravated assault committed by another Teresa.
"Her birth date didn't match. Her address didn't match. Her description didn't match. Other than the name Teresa, nothing matched," Culpepper's attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, told the paper. Merchant says the city must settle with Culpepper or face a lawsuit. Police told Channel 2 Action News they are investigating the incident.
"I didn't know what to do," Culpepper said of the incident. "I didn't know how to get out this situation."
 
Glad my name isn't Teresa.

[Brett]

That's some fine detective work there.   

[Conan The Librarian]

This is an example of why I am against the death penalty. There are so many cases of people being railroaded by the cops and the courts. In the case of the death penalty, a lot of the guys on it have not been properly represented legally. Our system should have a death penalty for heinous crimes. But the system we have is so flawed that you can't trust it to work.
 
This story doesn't surprise me a bit. Similarly, with the huge increase in the use of swat teams being applied for even relatively minor infractions, we can no longer trust our enforcement system. The legal system with overwhelmed public defenders who have huge case loads and limited time per case fails to serve as a counterbalance on the enforcement abuses.