Yes, but it generally helps if they can produce someone who says "yes, my truck was stolen".

> in most cases, i think details are pretty important. here, not really. let's say he straight up stole the truck. does he deserve life in prison? doubtful

This is reasonable, but I think the details I wondered about are important to another issue, that of "how the heck was this guy jailed at all?"

Lacking any other evidence, I tend to lean toward the theory that he did straight up steal the truck, and the ACLU is whitewashing him, which (a) is weird, since they're not apologizing for much less sympathetic prisoners, and (b) implicates a third important issue, "can we trust the ACLU to describe its own cases?"