Another reason to not trust the police

Don't think your jurisdiction is any better than Virginia.  The law isn't on your side, they're on their side.

Another Reason To Be Against The Death Penalty
The wrongful conviction rate in Virginia alone is just appalling. Dahlia Lithwick writes at Slate that of 214 DNA samples of incarcerated people obtained between 1973 and 1988 that could still yield accurate results, a whopping 70-plus people (perhaps even 79 of those people) were excluded as perpetrators of a crime:

Whatever the percentage of error on the part of Virginia's criminal justice system, one thing is certain: Only a handful of the falsely convicted have received the exonerations they deserve. Since DNA retesting began in Virginia, two people have been formally exonerated and another, who is dead, was cleared of a rape he didn't commit. When Barbour's paperwork is processed, he will be only the fourth person to be exonerated, despite the fact that the state is aware of scores of others who may be innocent. Even now Barbour remains skeptical. "They can do anything now to trick it up like they did 34 years ago," he says. "I'm not going to be excited 'til it all comes out. I'm innocent. I'm here. But I don't trust the justice system. Period."After all, Virginia authorities never did successfully contact Barbour to acknowledge his innocence. It was Jonathan Sheldon, a private-practice attorney in Fairfax, Va. who took it upon himself to contact Barbour and many of the other 70-some men who have been convicted of crimes, excluded by DNA testing, and never advised of that fact. As of today, the state has given him only 32 names and Sheldon says he has already located most of them. Some are dead. Some are dying. Some suffer from mental illnesses that make it impossible for them to even understand why he is calling. As the Richmond-Times Dispatch's Frank Green, who first reported on Barbour's exclusion by DNA testing, wrote last month: "The Virginia Department of Forensic Science has issued reports that exclude at least 76 felons as the source of biological evidence in their cases." Yet as of last month, 29 of those felons had not been notified that the new DNA reports existed.

Barbour, whose story leads the piece, lost five years of his life in jail and is stricken with cancer:

Jonathan Sheldon, a lawyer familiar with his case says, "People think, 'Oh, he only got five years.' But in that five years he lost his six-month-old marriage, and scarred his relationship with his daughter. That five years broke him."The Commonwealth of Virginia learned that Bennett Barbour was innocent nearly two years ago, when DNA testing cleared him of the crime. Virginia authorities, however, never informed Barbour of his innocence. (State officials claim to have mailed a letter with the test results to Barbour's last four known addresses, but none of those letters ever reached him.) Barbour learned of the DNA tests that proved his innocence only last month, on Feb. 5, when he received a phone call from Sheldon. "I was with my nephew playing cards, and Mr. Sheldon called my mother's house looking for me," says Barbour. "He said the authorities stopped looking for me because they couldn't find me. But Sheldon found me in two days using the Internet."
Actually, that's not true. It only took Sheldon a few hours.