Re:How the F.B.I. Can Detain, Render and Threaten Without Risk
by jsprogrammer on Tuesday November 03, 2015 @01:38PM
(#10501550)
Hmm. I didn't say "tell the truth". I said "Don't lie". You may construe that however you want, I guess.
I don't see how all of what you described couldn't also happen if you just didn't say anything. The difference would be that you now have no contradictory statements or evidence.
It doesn't matter that the eyewitness was mistaken, and just saw someone who looked like you who drove a similar looking vehicle, or that the purchase was made by your wife who was borrowing your credit card, because that coffee shop didn't have security cameras proving one way or the other.
At the end of the day, you're looked at as guilty, for a time at least, and possibly forever. You have to waste your every spare dollar hiring a defense attorney to prove your innocence. You have to fend off mobs of social justice warriors who have ruined your reputation on the internet and real life, who may have lowered your business' Yelp score to approximately zero. You have to find a new job, because your old one fired you once you were indicted, and the newspapers justified them by placing your picture on the front page as the guilty party, but only printing the retraction months later on page 18.
And this is of course a scenario predicated on the notion that your attorney is able to actually get you found innocent, and you aren't further hindered by spending decades in prison for a crime you didn't commit.