In Danish prisons, inmates appeared to be ordinary citizens. They wear their own clothes, prepare their own meals, and can be visited by their families as frequently as once a week. And the confinements they are in are just like transient buildings, with no barbed wires, concrete walls with gun towers, or secure prison ground to prevent escape. But not all jails adopt this penitentiary system. So unless you get arrested in Denmark, going to prison can be one of the worst nightmares to come to reality.
Here are some wrong turns that lead people to wake up in such a nightmare and need bail bonds to temporarily get out of that nightmare:
1. Failing to conceal one’s identity and actually handing over one’s name and address while robbing a bank.
Bank robbers usually know that robbing a bank is one difficult feat. Hence, we often watch movies where transgressors develop an intricate plan on how they could enter a bank, obtain their target sum, and make it out alive without a trace.
But Michael Harrell didn’t bother to spend time to come up with a solid plan. He dashed into a US bank in Cleveland then ordered a teller to hand over some cash through a note. It turns out he used a BMV form with his name and address on it. He was arrested just a few days after. What a solid lead he left to make the police’s job a lot easier.
2. Saved lives and faced prison thereafter
Saving lives is a heroic act, so why would anyone be jailed for it, you ask. It depends on the kind of living thing you are saving. Well, in this case, a well-meaning but oblivious 25-year-old Canadian woman parked her car in the left lane on a Montreal-area highway to rescue a group of ducklings. What’s wrong with that? Why would anyone be jailed for saving ducks?
It could have almost been admirable, except this caused the death of two motorcyclists, a father, and a daughter. They reportedly had a speed of 70 to 80 mph in a 60-mph zone when they crashed into Emma Czornobaj’s parked car. The spouse and mother of the victims were tailing them at a slower speed and avoided the crash.
The self-proclaimed animal lover testified that she did not see the ducklings’ mother anywhere. She stopped to herd them, intending to take them home.
The jury unanimously convicted Czornobaj on two counts of reckless driving resulting in homicide, which entails a maximum of 14 years in jail. Plus two counts of criminal negligence causing death, bearing a maximum of life imprisonment.
What do we take from this? Exercising prudence on the road is a must. And also, given a choice between ducklings’ lives and humans’, please, choose humans.’ The deaths were unintentional but could have been avoided had the 25-yr-old been prudent. On the other side, thousands petitioned on Change.org for the Canadian legal system to be more lenient in this case, given the circumstances. Yes, there was no criminal intent, but she could face life imprisonment.
3. Being freed after eight decades
This is a story of the nine Scottsboro Boys, aged 12 to 19, prosecuted for raping two white women. They were aboard the train when a fight occurred; they just happened to be in the wrong place. They had two volunteer lawyers in their defense. But despite the doctors’ testimony, stating that no rape had taken place, the jury composed of all white still convicted the nine, sentencing eight of them to death and sparing only the 12-year-old.
The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling 1932 on the ground of inadequate counsel. Alabama State had a retrial on one of the accused, but he still received a reconviction. Another from the group was retried, and he was sentenced to 75-year imprisonment.
After several retrials, reconvictions, triumphant appeals, and persistent pressures from citizens’ groups, the State released the four youngest—after serving six years in prison—and paroled the remaining three. The State pardoned them in 2013, 82 years after their arrest.
Not everyone who lands in jail is inherently bad. They may have had a difficult life that inclined them to take that road, just happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or was wrongly accused. No matter what part of the globe we are in, we will always have an imperfect justice system. If you ever find your family or friends in this unfortunate situation, resorting to bail bonds can be the way to go while you fight for truth to come out and justice to be served.
