Wrongfully Arrested: 3 Shocking Cases

Getting arrested sucks pretty bad, but imagine how it feels to go to jail when you’re innocent of any crime. They say “innocent until proven guilty” in the United States, but it seems it's the exact opposite. After an arrest, wrongfully accused individuals must spend time in jail and pay a bondsman if they want out of the slammer. Then, they a lawyer to defend themselves against the charges in court, which costs money, miss work, and possibly lose their jobs, which also costs money, and otherwise endure tribulations they should never have experienced.

Florida Man Arrested After Police Mistake Glazed Doughnut for Meth

In December 2015, Orlando police performed a traffic stop on 64-year-old Daniel Rushing. He’d just dropped a friend off at chemotherapy and was driving another woman from his church home from her job as a cashier at 7-11 when the office clocked him traveling at 42 miles per hour in a 30-mile-per-hour zone.

Rushing informed the four officers who pulled him over that he had a pistol on his person and provided the officer with his permit. Off. Cpl. Shelby Riggs-Hopkins ordered Rushing to step out of the car at which time he gave permission for officers to search his car.

On the car’s floorboard, Cpl. Riggs-Hopkins noticed four tiny flakes of glaze. Suspecting the flakes were pieces of crystal methamphetamine, officers placed Rushing in handcuffs. A roadside drug test confirmed the flakes were an illegal substance. Rushing told them the substance was sugar from a glazed donut, but they’d hear none of it.

I'd think if anyone could identify donut glaze it'd be police officers!

Rushing was arrested, and charged with possession of crystal methamphetamine. Riggs-Hopkins wrote in her arrest report, "I recognized through my eleven years of training and experience as a law enforcement officer the substance to be some sort of narcotic.”

Several weeks later, the state crime lab tested the flakes and determined Rushing had told the truth: the crystals were not flakes of crystal methamphetamine, but instead, pieces of hardened sugar glaze from a Krispy Kreme donut Rushing had eaten in his car.

Charges against Rushing were dismissed. He later filed a lawsuit against the Orlando Police Department, winning an undisclosed sum of money.

Black Man Arrested for Warrant on White Man Twice His Age

Shane Brown spent six days locked up in a Nevada jail after officers misidentified him as a White man nearly twice his age. The mishap landed Brown a $90,000 payout in a lawsuit filed against the Henderson and Las Vegas police departments.

Police arrested Brown, then 25, on January 8, 2020, after a traffic stop as he drove home from work. Stopped for driving an unregistered vehicle, Brown did not have this driver’s license on him, so provided his social security number instead. He also alerted police that he had a traffic warrant.

When police ran his name, a felony warrant for a man named Shane N. Brown showed. The names were the same, but their skin color and dae of birth were very different. The other Brown was 49 years old and had a felony bench warrant for ownership or possession of a firearm by a prohibited person.

Brown was taken into custody and spent six days behind bars. The real Shane Neal Brown was arrested two days later in Needles, CA, and transported to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police. For four days, both Shane Browns were in the same jail on the same charges booked as the same person.

Homeless Man Arrested Trying to Buy Breakfast at Burger King

In a case of profiling, a homeless man who tried to buy breakfast at a Boston, MA, Burger King restaurant was charged with forgery of a bank note y after workers at the restaurant claimed the $10 bill he used was fake.

Emory Ellis attempted to buy breakfast at the Burger King restaurant in November 2015 and spent three months in county jail as a result. The cashier taking Ellis’s order “discriminated against him for his appearance,” his attorney, Justin Drechsler wrote in a lawsuit filed against the company.

Officials tested the $10 bill while Ellis was incarcerated. Lab tests confirmed the bill was real. Ellis was released from jail with all charges dismissed.

Ellis filed a $950,000 lawsuit against the restaurant.