you would be better served by staying silent and just being thought a fool instead of opening your mouth and proving it.
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/...-that-never-occurred--it-happens-all-too-oft/
Convicted of a crime that never occurred? It happens all too often, law prof says
We are used to hearing about wrongful convictions in which a murderer walked free because an innocent person was misidentified. But when Jessica S. Henry, a professor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, was researching material for her course on wrongful convictions, she discovered that in one-third of all known exonerations, the conviction was wrongful because there had not even been a crime.
This discovery paved the way for her new book, Smoke But No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened.
In the book, Henry recounts stories of disappearances that were deemed to be murders until the living “victim” was discovered, natural deaths that were deemed suspicious because of faulty forensic science, and fabricated accusations that sent innocent people to jail.
More importantly, Henry identifies the lapses at every stage of the justice system that can allow for these injustices to occur: from dishonest police officers to careless forensic labs, overzealous prosecutors, overworked defense attorneys, and overly permissive and underinformed judges. She also examines the forces at play that pressure innocent people into agreeing to plea deals in which they plead guilty to a crime that never happened. Unsurprisingly, marginalized people are most at risk of these no-crime wrongful convictions.