[DrewDevil]

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great read thus far.
my friend is 20 years old and a few months ago he was pretty much set up by this girl and her mom. the girl turned out to be 13, but by god she looks atleast 17. he went over there and watched movies with them. the next day a sheriff shows up and arrests him for child molestation or some crap. he is in the paper the next day with it saying that he basically is a child rapist.
fast forward and his case is thrown out because the semen sample from the condom the aunt supplied the police does not match my friends DNA.

now his court-appointed attorney is telling him they can sue for unlawful arrest (since he did jail time for this) and suing the paper for libel. does it sound like he would win either of this suits? if so, is he going to get rich off of this? ...he has promised he will hook me up big time if he does, since i have helped him a ton in the past.

for what its worth, my friend has been in a lot of legal trouble in the past, one such thing being him accused of statuatory rape, but was found innocent. not sure if that has any play here

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If the paper published something that was (1) untrue and (2) defamatory, he may have a libel action. Hard to say how much he could win... depends how much he was damaged and how egregious the newspaper's behavior was.

There are probably causes of action against the mother/aunt( ?) also, but those vary from state to state. Are the mother and aunt rich? That may be one of the key factors.