re: Ever been falsely accused of anything?

I was accused and taken into the police station with media around and filming me for a bank robbery. The prior day, I went to the local Wells Fargo to deposit a check in an asociate's business account (I do not have an account there). I have a business that does large cash transactions daily. To avoid paying a fortune in bank wire fees, most people in the industry have accounts at major banks with branches all over. We just go and deposit checks into each other's accounts.

Anyway, I was driving my Jeep that day and had a big beard which I've only grown out maybe twice in my life. The next day around 10:30AM, that branch was robbed by a guy in a big black Jeep that looked like mine (down to a couple random stickers placed on it) and the guy looked exactly like me. I mean exactly, down to the shirt and baseball hat I was wearing. They came and picked me up at home around 8PM and I was taken in and processed as the sole suspect who they "positively" identified in the heist. It took almost 48 hours to clear my name. The detectives questioning me didn't care to check out my story, and were too busy threatening me in the interrogation room. I live in a town with almost zero crime. The biggest crime in the past year was someone accidentally forgetting to pay for a bag of ice at the grocery store. The cops were taking full advantage of it, and they were doing routines as if they've watched Law & Order too many times. It was comical how ignorant and stupid the questioning was. I could write another whole post making a mockery of my time spent at the jail. Even after verifying it wasn't me, they had these elaborate pipe dreams about how I was in two places at once and it was all planned out.

Want to know my alibi? I was at the county courthouse for jury duty! They finally went and pulled the camera footage and court logs and saw me, in my Jeep, at the courthouse the whole morning. This was the first and only time I've been summoned too. I was pretty damn close to not going, but said screw it and went anyway to take a breather from work.

Moral of the story? Do your civic duty and go to jury duty. If not, you might be spending the rest of your life in prison for a violent crime you didn't commit.