Wrong Arrest Costs Man 19 Days, His Job

Friday the 13th was a really bad day for John Hines III last month.

Hines, a 42-year-old recovering alcoholic who lives in a halfway house in Costa Mesa, was smoking a cigarette behind a bank that day, waiting for his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor who was inside on business.

As misfortune would have it, a hairstylist whose Newport Beach shop had been held up two weeks earlier spotted him, called police and identified him as the robber.

“My sponsor didn’t want me to smoke in the car,” Hines said Friday. “I saw (a woman) walk by. . . . All of a sudden, I saw three or four police cars and a helicopter.

“My sponsor said, ‘Hey, he lives in a sober house and I don’t think he did it.’ But there wasn’t really anything else he could do.”

Hines was arrested on suspicion of armed robbery. It took until this week for authorities to determine he had been misidentified and release him from custody.

Municipal Judge Christopher W. Strople in Newport Beach dismissed the charge Wednesday against Hines, just minutes before the start of a preliminary hearing to determine if there were enough evidence to try him.

The robbery victim and her co-worker, who both picked Hines from a police photo lineup, got a closer look at him in court and determined he was the wrong man.

“As soon as they got up close to me, looking three or four feet through the glass at the courtroom, they said, ‘Oh-oh. That’s not the guy,’ ” Hines said.

Neither woman could be reached for comment, but Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Pear, who was handling the case, said: “They saw (Hines) in the courtroom and expressed some doubt to me whether that was the person who committed the crime. Both the victim and the witness spoke briefly with him to hear his voice.” And both were then certain Hines was not the culprit, Pear said.

By then Hines had spent 19 days in jail and lost his job as a cabinetmaker. Despite that, he remains philosophical.

“In a way it was a blessing in disguise, even though I was doing someone else’s time,” he said. “I needed to make amends, to clean up the wreckage of my past and just go on. I had been lying a little bit about my past and my life.”

Hines said he doesn’t blame the witnesses for thinking he was the robber: He was shown a composite drawing of the robber on the day of his arrest and admits a striking resemblance.

“I hope they catch the guy,” he said.