He does, unfortunately, have numerous arrests, all eventually dismissed.  He’s had to endure his daughter being called by police looking for him to arrest him.  That surely wasn’t pleasant, any more than being taken away in cuffs and locked up, but it was nothing compared with the next exposure to law enforcement.

But on May 1 of last year, King George deputies surrounded Morton’s house and informed him he’d been charged with selling cocaine to an undercover officer in Fredericksburg on March 5.

A city grand jury indicted Rodney Maurice Morton, but a judge dismissed that charge on June 2, 2008, after it was determined that Rodney Lee Morton was again the intended defendant.

In case you didn’t notice, Morton was indicted for the alleged crime of his namesake and it took a month for the system to figure out that it had the wrong Rodney.  Again. 

The experience of being arrested, cuffed, booked, held and arraigned isn’t a pleasant one under the best of circumstances.  It’s absolutely shocking to the system of an innocent person who has been wrongly accused.  Imagine what it must feel like to a person who is not merely innocent, but wrongly identified.  Imagine what it must feel like the second time.  Or third,

Given the advances in technology and communication, it seems almost impossible that police could screw up in ways such as this.  Of course, given the frequency of search warrant executions on the wrong address, merely arresting the wrong person because he has a similar name hardly seems so terrible.  Still, the police would have us believe that they know what they’re doing, that they are capable and competent, the “new professionals” as Justice Scalia calls them.

Basic, low-rent screw ups like this must serve to remind us that the assertions of law enforcement, are not, per se, reliable.  They just aren’t that smart, aren’t that good, aren’t that trustworthy.  They get it wrong all the time.  No, not always, and not in the entirety, but wrong nonetheless.  And screw-ups result in misery for regular people.  Sometimes death.  Sometimes decades in prison for the wrong person.  And the cops (and prosecutors) are invariably certain that they are right, and were right all along, until they are proven wrong.  Even then, they do everything in their power to smear the victim and justify their screw-up.

But they can’t smear Rodney Maurice Morton.  He’s clean as a whistle, security clearance and all.  They can make him miserable, disrupt his life and cost him a bundle to defend himself from their screw-ups.  But they can’t shift the blame on him.

Of course, not all of us work for a national security agency and have security clearance.  Just pray that one of the thousands of people who share your name doesn’t do anything nasty.  It might not be so easy for you to persuade the judge that its some other guy who did the deed. 

H/T Injustice Everywhere