I have no need to convince you, a random person on hacker news. It's a small enough town that next to everyone knows her story. There has been more than one investigation but she's protected. She was stalking my friends and I due to disagreements between her son and some of my friends at school.

As for the mistrial, it's only in spirit because my public defender flat out refused to take my case seriously and refused to appeal on grounds that it would make her life difficult.

It's hard to make people believe or understand what small town corruption is like unless they've seen it for themselves. The mayor himself showed up at the place I was crashing at after I got arrested just to further make things more difficult for me... what kind of psychotic town allows for such behavior?

FWIW, I totally believe you.

It's nuts. With my own two eyes I once watched this cop in question pull up to a grocery store in her patrol car in broad daylight with a near-toothless old woman in the passenger seat. That old woman proceeded to go into the store and buy a stack of Sudafed, got back in the patrol car and they rolled out. I guessed that she was having supplier issues and needed a fix, so she found a smurf.

I thought about calling the police and getting them to review the footage, but it was a crapshoot who showed up and if I would only get into more trouble.