The justice system is not your friend. Simply getting yourself arrested can lead to many problems including getting sent to prison for years as the story in this article shows. Checking for warrants for arrest is one way of avoiding arrest.
Check your warrants for arrest and deal with them now
An innocent man in the UK was recently sent to prison for 6 years. His only crime was to get himself arrested for a domestic disturbance where no charges were ever brought against him. The arrest was a mistake but it set off a chain of events that ultimately saw a jury find him guilty of rape and hence the prison sentence.
"How could this happen?" I hear you say. You probably think that the innocent have nothing to fear from the law and it could never happen to you? Well this case shows that this simply isn't true,
it could happen to you which is why it is so important that you take steps to avoid getting arrested. Checking for arrest warrants regularly is one way of minimizing your risk of becoming a legal statistic.
If you are a man be afraid - be very afraid
Anyone who gets arrested in the UK now must allow the police to take a sample of their DNA for inclusion into the national DNA database. Many believe that there is now a policy of arresting people for anything possible simply to collect DNA for the database. This policy is evident when you see people getting arrested for offenses that would have warranted no more than a firm telling off from a police officer 20 years ago.
This policy of arrest to collect DNA is fast becoming the norm in the US and I'm sure it will overtake the UK database in the very near future. On the face of it there is nothing to worry about if you have not committed a crime but this is far from reality I'm afraid.
Does a DNA match make you automatically guilty? It seems that it does
The UK case of which I speak was an alleged rape of a woman which happened 16 years before the defendant was arrested and his DNA collected. The DNA was subsequently matched to the sample found on the alleged victim when she reported the incident to the police 16 years earlier.
This makes the defendant a suspect and he accepted that he must have had a one night stand with the alleged victim but has no memory of either the event nor the woman. He was very insistent that he could not have committed this crime because he knows that he has never raped anyone. He would surely have remembered the event had he done so.
Experts testified that the DNA sample could have been deposited at any time up to 3 days before the alleged incident. No evidence to place the defendant at the scene was produced and the defendant was not identified as the attacker.
These are the only facts that are known in the case and the jury were instructed that they must find the defendant innocent if they were not absolutely certain that he committed the offence. The jury were also told that the alleged victim had claimed to be the victim of rape on 2 previous occasions, she had a drug habit and none of the prosecution witnesses could agree on vital questions.
The defendant had never before been seen on the police radar for any offence and was of good standing in the community with a partner and 2 adorable small children.
Can you trust a jury?
Why did all 12 members of the jury decide that he was guilty beyond all reasonable doubt? In my opinion they did not base their decision on the facts which was their job. Instead they voted with emotion after hearing the prosecution make up a fictitious story about how the defendant committed the offence. This story had no basis in fact at all.
Don't get arrested on a warrant - Keep your DNA to yourself
Don't believe the lie that the innocent have nothing to fear from the law. You and I have a lot to fear. In fact I now fear the justice system more than I fear criminals. My advice to you is to avoid getting arrested. If they don't collect your DNA then they can't match you to a cold case with such ease.
Avoid the police whenever you can. Don't let them even see you. If they can't see you then they can't arrest you. Check for warrants for arrest regularly and deal with them as quickly as possible. This will avoid getting arrested unexpectedly on a routine traffic stop or when the police call at your home. You can check for arrest warrants using a public records investigations web site. The peace of mind this can give you is worth far more than the small fee that they will charge you.
