Drat, missed the edit window on my post where I also wanted to say I liked the thread title and also “I fought the law, and the law won”. At least I’m not breaking rocks in the hot sun.
Or as Bill Murray said in Stripes, “We’re Americans . . . That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world.”
My brother has a rap sheet for assault, drugs, and the usual small-town redneck stuff. He did a few weeks in jail a decade ago but has been clean (or rather, I suspect, just hasn’t been caught) ever since.
My BIL’s brother did a decade for 1st degree murder. His conviction was overturned on appeal and a new trial was ordered, but the state decided to just drop the whole thing. I don’t know why; from what I understand a surviving victim ID’d him and that led to his conviction. From my vantage point it was pretty open-and-shut case but I’m not a lawyer so I guess there are some details I’m ignorant of.
A niece’s ex-husband is currently awaiting trail for 2nd degree murder. He’s claiming self-defense and just may get away with it.
Personally I’ve never recived so much as a speeding ticket. 
I’m confused - how was he the real criminal if he expunged your unfair record?
One of my grandfathers, reputedly, deserted five armies.
White Russian, Red Russian, Polish, and offhand I forget the other two – ah. German and Austria-Hungarian, probably, if I’m reading that Wiki article right. None of them were in any real sense his army; he’d been impressed as a dishwasher etc., not as a soldier. I don’t think any of them were arming Jews.
Try not to live anywhere that gets overrun by five armies in a relatively short period of time. It was not fun.
The other grandfather, and my grandmother on that side (they never officially married, though they stayed together unto death and raised 6 kids), were on the lam from the Tsar. They had to break my grandfather out of jail and flee the country.
The story I got was that my grandmother went to visit him in jail with several of her friends, and they dressed my grandfather up in womens’ clothes that they’d brought with them and walked out with him in the middle of the group. I wonder whether bribery wasn’t somehow involved.
I have never been arrested, let alone convicted. This is not to say that I’ve never done anything I could have been arrested for. Haven’t murdered anybody, though.
I like the double-negative.
Ain’t no mountain high enough
My paternal grandfather embezzled from the tire company he worked for in Akron Ohio. He was essentially fired and told to go far away (to spare the company’s reputation). His wife (my grandmother)'s twin sister was living in Los Angeles, so that’s where they went. They eventually divorced. The story is their divorce decree was granted the day my parents got their marriage license. My dad cut off all contact with his dad because of the divorce, and I never met that grandfather. I saw a photo of him once.
My uncle (not a blood relative, my father’s brother-in-law) ran away from home and eventually crossed the border into Canada. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. This would have been around 1939 or 1940. I don’t know exactly how long he was in but he was never sent to Europe. When the U.S. entered the war he deserted and returned home and joined the Navy. He joked that if he ever went into Canada he would be arrested. He was joking but I don’t think he ever tried.
A bit more than 20 years ago, my cousin’s 22-year-old son slit his girlfriend’s throat, then his own wrists, while their 23-month-old son slept in the next room.
My cousin’s ex-wife, the baby’s grandmother, raised him as her own. My cousin also killed himself, a year after his son died.
Does imprisonment for political reasons count?
If so, my father. He fought in the Spanish civil war on the loyalist side (republicans). After Franco won, he went into hiding for three years (he had been a medic in the republican army with the rank of lieutenant, and at the time the victors were shooting lots of officers of the defeated side).
Somebody betrayed him, and he was arrested. Although at the time the frenzy to kill republican officers had abated a bit, my father’s belonging to the Spanish communist party and his being a member of the masons didn’t do him any favors.
After a thorough beating that broke quite a few ribs in his body, he was put on trial for being a dastardly red (btw, trials in Franco Spain were done under the rule of “guilty unless proven innocent”). He was duly sentenced to death.
He spent a month waiting for every day to be his last. In the meantime, some doctor friends of his who were in good terms with the regime managed to bribe the relevant individuals in Madrid, and managed to get his sentenced commuted from death to 30 years in jail.
My father was in jail until the amnesty of 1948. He was blacklisted afterwards, but that is another story.
He also had a harrowing experience during the war wherein he was one of 16 survivors of his 800-men unit, but that is also another story.
My great grandfather spent time in San Quentin for forging checks. I understand he spent time in other prisons for the same type of offense, but we only really know of those because my great grandmother would move near the prison so she could easily visit. My grandfather didn’t have a high opinion of him.
Other than that, most of my family has limited their incarceration to mild amounts of jail time (mostly not even that, we’re loony, but generally not felonious).
My mother’s side of the family could relate.
I had a great grandfather who left Prussia when he was sixteen. He was a draft dodger, and didn’t feel like being cannon fodder for Bismarck. He was the most recent of my ancestors who was not born in the US.
I had a five times great grandfather who fought in the Revolutionary war and was courtmartialed. Religious bigotry was involved as his family was Protestant and he didn’t want to fight with the French soldiers Lafayette brought over. But his sentence was commuted when the military needed soldiers so badly they’d forgive him.
I’ll elaborate with a slight hijack. When he was still a lawyer, he wanted $5000 to have my record expunged and told me only he could do it after 5 years. Other lawyers charged $500, so after 5 years, I went to the best law firm in town and paid the $500. They got turned down because they said my original (court appointed) lawyer had a side deal with the probation department. That is, they needed paid off and probably the original judge as well.
So I lived with it for 15 more years, then I had money and needed it done because I was changing jobs so went back to his firm to have it done. They informed me that I could not talk to him any longer since he was now the judge. But that they could do it for now $200. It took less than a week for them to have it done. He was hiding a crooked deal.
I should make thread about this entire situation once I retire this year.
So, he did not take part in the Battle Of Minas Tirith ?
My family is law-abiding, for the most part. I did have a relative who ran a speakeasy and an uncle who was disbarred for various peccadilloes related to his drug and alcohol problems. I also have a cousin who did hard time for drug convictions, but I don’t have the details. Yes, my family has a nasty history of drug and alcohol problems, which is why I stay away from substances. My mother played so fast and loose with her business dealings that my brother (who is a criminal defense attorney) and I (who is a financial crimes analyst) were surprised she was never prosecuted for financial crimes. And, of course, my ex-husband was convicted of murdering my older child, but I don’t want to get into that here. He’s an ex for very good reasons.
I have a cousin who was featured in one episode of the program “Disappeared.” He is the only person of interest in the case, and almost certainly committed foul play. This is a well-known disappearance in this small state. Unfortunately, the police at the time didn’t take her disappearance seriously until about a month later, at which point, her apartment had been cleared out and another tenant moved in.
I was a vice officer’s dream for a time, although I never got caught. Eventually, I got better.
I have a cousin who found a girl’s checkbook in college, and wrote forged checks. He got kicked out of school for that, but as far as I know he wasn’t prosecuted.
His mom embezzled money from her employers. I don’t know exactly what happened with that, other than to say that my mom - who was living with her at the time - once told of the time the police executed a search warrant on the home (“they even went through her underwear”).
That’s about it, though. We aren’t a violent people; just misguided.
When I was a kid, we knew our maternal grandfather’s mother died young and his father (her husband) committed suicide not long after. We were led to believe that he was despondent and just couldn’t deal with it.
Not to long ago, my mother’s cousin got into genealogy and discovered “the rest of the story” - tho not all the details. Apparently this great-grandfather killed a man, then committed suicide in prison. Cuz couldn’t find any particulars, but I guess that’s why they let us believe he died of a broken heart.
One of my cousins did time for theft and prostitution to support her opioid addiction. Then she got clean, then she OD’d and died in her 40s. It wasn’t too surprising - she’d been kinda messed up ever since her parents divorced when she was a pre-schooler.
One relative got a bit too cute with their taxes and got an IRS audit which resulted in some stiff fines but not to the point of hauling their ass to jail.