Police Jailed Innocent Woman for 53 Days, Mixed Up Names [VIDEO]

Teresa Culpepper wasn’t surprised to see the police at her door. The Atlanta woman had called them to report her truck stolen, but when they arrested her for assault instead, she was terribly confused.

Turns out, so were they. Culpepper shared a first name with a woman they were looking for — a woman who was also African-American but bore no other similar characteristics. Their heights, weights, addresses and ages didn’t even match.

But because Culpepper and her family didn’t have the $12,000 bond required to bail her out, she sat in jail for almost two months. She was released only when her public defender found the victim of the assault and brought him to the court to say she was not the “Teresa” he had accused.

Culpepper’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, is threatening a lawsuit against the police department, which is investigating the incident.



Watch Culpepper tell her story.