The "highly trained professionals" just looked at Facebook pictures and arrested a young man who had nothing to do with the rape. He offered DNA samples immediately hoping to prove his innocence but he still was jailed and it took 15 months (!) just to send the DNA samples for testing and then another year (!!) to conduct the test. This young man lost 2 years of his life, the bail money ($540,000) and of course his name will still be stained.
When cops and prosecutors are not held accountable, why would they care if they throw an innocent man in jail? If instead they were sent to prison (or death row to be executed) and forced to pay all the expenses and punitive damages
out of their own pockets it might be a different story. Laws and punishment don't seem to apply to cops and prosecutors.
Man who spent 2 years in jail for crime he did not commit now freeFor two years, Weaver was locked up in jail for a crime that he did not commit.
“It’s just sad that two years of a young man’s life were taken away from him,” Emory Anthony Jr., the attorney representing Weaver, said. He first took the case back in 2017. “This all started with the allegation that a home was broken into. The young lady was raped, sodomized. They were robbed.”
Anthony Jr. explained that through a photo of Weaver on Facebook that bore a resemblance to the alleged perpetrator, Weaver was linked to the case and arrested. In total, he was facing 11 charges.
Weaver never did give up, but because bond was set to about $540,000, he sat in jail for two years. For the entirety of that time, he waited for DNA found at the crime scene to be tested. Per his attorney, Weaver eagerly submitted his own DNA for testing as well.
The test results came back this summer and the DNA collected at the scene did not match Weaver’s.
He could finally go home. He was finally free.
https://www.cbs42.com/top-stories/man-who-spent-2-years-in-jail-for-crime-he-did-not-commit-now-free/Two Years Later, Treveon Weaver ExoneratedAccording to Weaver’s attorney, Emory Anthony, Weaver was pegged as the suspect through one of his photos on Facebook. Apparently, the attorney said, Weaver bore a resemblance to the real attacker.
A resemblance, as in, “well, he kinda looks like the guy,” which might be said about one, or ten or a thousand, people.* Some of us have unique characteristics that make our appearance stand out. Others, well, we’re fairly ordinary looking. But almost all of us have other people who resemble us, to some extent or another. To say Weaver “resembled” the perp is to say that the silver Prius resembled the getaway car, limiting the focus to a few thousand cars in any given city.
According to court records, the assailant urinated on the victim. DNA samples were taken from the scene. Those samples were turned over to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences and returned to Bessemer police on April 19, 2018.
The results excluded Weaver’s DNA from being found on the victim or at the scene of the crime, according to a motion filed by Weaver’s attorney Anthony, who had repeatedly requested the results. He received them, he said, days before Weaver’s April 1 trial was to begin.
“The untimely giving of the DNA results some 11 months later is prejudicial to the defendant in this case and has violated his constitutional right to timely have evidence showing he is not guilty,’’ Anthony wrote.
It took 11 months to get the DNA results that could have been produced the next day had the prosecution wanted that to happen. But it also took 15 months beforehand to get Weaver’s DNA tested at all, based on his lawyer’s pushing and motion. One might suspect that the cops or prosecutors would have sought DNA testing within minutes of Weaver’s arrest, if for no other reason than to nail down their case against him and prove as conclusively as possible that he was the person who raped and sodomized a woman in her own home.
https://blog.simplejustice.us/2019/08/29/two-years-later-treveon-weaver-exonerated/