Hundreds Wrongfully Imprisoned in LA County Jails

LOS ANGELES - Hundreds of people have been wrongly imprisoned in Los Angeles County jails in recent years, with some spending weeks behind bars before authorities realized those arrested were mistaken for wanted criminals, it was reported Sunday.

The wrongful incarcerations occurred more than 1,480 times in the last five years as a result of a variety of factors, including officials' overlooking fingerprint evidence and working off incomplete records, the Los Angeles Times reported finding in an investigation.

The errors are so common that in some years people were jailed because
of mistaken identity an average of once a day, according to the newspaper.

Many of those wrongly held inside the county's lockups had the same names as criminals or had their identities stolen --- problems that took days or weeks for authorities to sort out.

In one case, a mechanic held for nine days in 1989 on a warrant meant
for someone else was detained again 20 years later on the same warrant.

He was jailed for more than a month the second time before the error was discovered, The Times reported. In another instance, a Nissan customer service supervisor was hauled by authorities from Tennessee to L.A. County on a local sex-crimes warrant meant for someone with a similar name.

In a third case, 53-year-old Jose Ventura, a former construction worker
who had never been arrested, was mistaken for a wanted drug offender, assaulted by inmates and ignored by jailers, he told The Times.

The problems continue because of a breakdown not just by jail officials but by police who arrest the wrong people and by the courts, which have issued
warrants that did not precisely identify the right people, The Times reported.