Man in Brazil wrongly charged for 62 crimes after police use flawed photo ID Police relied on showing photo of Paulo Alberto da Silva Costa, wrongly jailed for years, to victims to identify him as an alleged perpetrator.
Such procedures have long been known to reflect racial biases and lead to miscarriages of justice, but they are still commonly used by Brazilian police, and have led to wrongful convictions of countless people, particularly Black people such as Costa.
Last May, a Black man sentenced to 170 years in prison after a conviction based on photo identification was released after spending 12 years behind bars.
The photos police used of him were selfies taken from his Facebook profile, and to this day, it remains unclear how pictures of a man without any criminal record ended up in a so-called “suspect album”.
They destroyed my life because I’m Black and poor,” said Costa, 37, who lives in Belford Roxo, an impoverished city on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
