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a distraction
Mar. 10th, 2006 10:33 amTwo different cities have agreed to $2M+ settlements for wrongful conviction of rape this week. In both cases, the suspects served 10 years in prison. (I don't know how long their sentences were.)
Imagine enduring a wrongful conviction of rape that lays waste to nearly all your interpersonal relationships and future prospects under your current identity, 10 years in a correctional facility, and then emerging to find a world 10 years ahead of you, with almost no other human acknowledging you as even an acquaintance... but with $2M (or $3.2M, in the other case) in your pocket.
Maybe nobody loves you, you have no friends, and no hope that your peers will ever fully believe you are innocent.
You choose a new name, a new identity. You fabricate a past, and move far away. Maybe you learn a new language. You start again. You don't work another day in your life, but your entire life before that accusation is gone.
(Imagine you did it all on purpose, with accomplices -- your "victim" is a paid participant, the "real rapist" a person out of reach: Someone who died while you were in prison, someone fictitious, whatever. Your 10 years and social destruction are an investment that yields $2M, an unimaginable education, and retirement at, say, 35.)
Imagine enduring a wrongful conviction of rape that lays waste to nearly all your interpersonal relationships and future prospects under your current identity, 10 years in a correctional facility, and then emerging to find a world 10 years ahead of you, with almost no other human acknowledging you as even an acquaintance... but with $2M (or $3.2M, in the other case) in your pocket.
Maybe nobody loves you, you have no friends, and no hope that your peers will ever fully believe you are innocent.
You choose a new name, a new identity. You fabricate a past, and move far away. Maybe you learn a new language. You start again. You don't work another day in your life, but your entire life before that accusation is gone.
(Imagine you did it all on purpose, with accomplices -- your "victim" is a paid participant, the "real rapist" a person out of reach: Someone who died while you were in prison, someone fictitious, whatever. Your 10 years and social destruction are an investment that yields $2M, an unimaginable education, and retirement at, say, 35.)
