Presumed Guilty.

I am retelling a story I read years ago in a Readers Digest. So the facts may be off a bit in this true story.

A brother and sister were in a car and they were leaving a party.

The brother was drunk, and a few corners from the party the car crashed killing the sister as she was thrown from the vehicle, presumably she had no seatbelt on.

A witness claimed that she saw the brother get out of the drivers side after the car accident, it was in the USA so this was the left side of the vehicle and that he was drunk.

Feeling very guilty and feeling deeply ashamed for his sisters death the brother accepted the blame and was going to go to jail for drinking and driving and the death of his sister, without a fight.

The man writing the story was his lawyer and he couldn’t get rid of the feeling that the brother was innocent, yet all the facts pointed to him being 100% guilty, and even the brother accepted that he was guilty even though he remembered nothing of the accident.

Everyone told the brother that he was guilty. The Police, the lawyers, the investigation team, all pointed to the brother and said that he was guilty.

But as things would have it this brothers lawyer just couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been overlooked, that something was wrong and a strong feeling that the brother did not kill his sister even though witnesses said so.

One day he was looking at photos of the overturned car, reading what the witness said, and then the penny dropped.

After the car accident that killed his sister the car was upside down, on its roof, when the brother got out of the car. The witness wrongfully said that he got out of the drivers side, but of course because the car was upside down on its roof so the drivers side was on the other side of the car, and no one had confirmed with the witness what side that was.

The lawyer then realised that the brother’s sister was driving because the brother was drunk and she wasn’t.

She had lost control at the corner, the car flipped, she was thrown out to her death, leaving the brother scrambling drunkenly out of the passenger side.

When they told the brother that he got out of the drivers side and that he was driving he was so overcome with guilt he believed it, after all, it was the Police, family and lawyers telling him that he was driving and a witness agreed, surely they could not all be wrong - but they were, they were all wrong.

After questioning the witness again, it was agreed by all that the brother was in the passenger seat drunk and unable to drive, the sister who was sober went to the party to pick up her brother and take him home.

The witness, a woman, was probably very stressed from witnessing the accident, seeing the dead sisters bloodied broken body on the ground nearby and made the wrong call. That kind of emotional stressful situation can play tricks on the mind and we can think that we saw something that we didn’t.

What I took from this true event was that many people can say something and yet all of them, educated, with titles, with money, and so on, all can be very wrong. If it happened once it can happen again and probably has many times and the law accidentally jailed the wrong person or people who did no wrong.

Thank God that the brother had a lawyer who didn’t agree with everyone else and went the extra mile to get the truth. We should never presume that someone is guilty until it is proven, and even then the judicial system could be wrong in some cases as history has shown us.

All the best from

James M Sandbrook.

30th of March, 2021.