26 July 2007

Decades of False Detention in the US

The BBC reports that "[four men] spent decades in prison after the FBI withheld evidence of their innocence. Two died in jail. After being falsely convicted and jailed in 1965, they were finally released in 2001 when the buried evidence of their innocence finally leaked its way out of the FBIs secrative locked files. For those of us in dictatorial-like states with excessive government control, this comes as no real surprise, the fact that it ever was proven to have taken place is most surprising. People disappear or are falsely imprisoned everyday in the United States and other harsh countries in the world.

A jury awared the families a total of $100 million US (worth much less with our wimpy dollar and being split by 4 families), which is hardly compensation for spending 36 years, half of their lives in a federal pen. The men who were behind this cowardly act should be imprisoned for the rest of their lives to give them a taste of what they did to innocent men, which would hardly even be enough, since these men have spent the better parts of their lives in freedom and are now nearly dead themselves.