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In reply to the discussion: Undercover cop begs autistic kid to break the law, then arrests him [View all]JackN415
(924 posts)I once encountered the injustice and drama that brought down my faith and pride in the US system of justice (including law enforcement).
A close friend's nephew is a foreign student who is as straight and narrow as anyone can be. One day, he was charged with possession of marijuana with the intention to distribute, in other words, a drug dealer.
What happened was that he held a friend's stuffs in his backpack, and a group of friends were arrested together. Despite the fact that he proved to the cops that those things were his friends that he carried without knowledge, they booked him, put him in jail that scarred him quite a bit.
When his uncle finally hired a good lawyer, they dropped all charges against him. The evidence? a pinch of weed in a wrap of paper, inside a bag with personal belongings of his friend, that he put in his backpack. He did it for that friend who had to carry bags of grocery for their party.
The irony is that the friend who had weed admitted to the cop later that the bag was his belonging and not this kid's. Yet, they kept the charge against him as a drug dealer.
Of course, with the good lawyer, they had to drop all charges against him. The lawyer said there was no chance they could convict him and any judge with common sense would dismiss. But the damage was done. The kid was traumatized, all for making a simple mistake of holding someone else stuffs.
What is so ridiculous about this is why LE has to be so zealous to the point of losing common sense and transgressing justice for things like this.