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This could be huge.
The kid who was was falsely accused is named Austin Carpenter. From the story, it sounds like the cop made an undercover drug buy, thought the man's name was "Austin Carpenter" (nice effort on the cop's part), and an arrest warrant was issued for the wrong guy. What's not clear from the story is this: If that cop pulled up Austin Carpenter's DPS driver's license photo, said "that's him", swore in an arrest affidavit that the Austin Carpenter in the photo was the same one he interacted with, and that's why the warrant was issued, the cop just handed anyone else he arrested in this sting a bag of gold.
It may be that he's proven he can be wrong in the area of eyewitness identification -- even when he was so sure he was willing to swear to it under oath.
(The Austin Carpenter arrest warrant affidavit was released yesterday before the warrant got pulled, but I haven't located it yet.)
Edit: Thanks to those that sent me the arrest warrant affidavit. Here's the key paragraph:
Edit: Now the word is that the arrest warrant is being "redone" for a different Austin Carpenter.
Edit: The Dallas Morning News says the picture on the arrest warrant affidavit was of the wrong Austin Carpenter. That's why it had to be redone. So back to the point of this post, if the officer picked that wrong Austin Carpenter's photo as the man who sold drugs, there are big problems.
Edit: Yep. The police are after a different Austin Carpenter whose attorney says, "Just dare me."
