"If he's innocent why doesn't he turn himself in...?"

The title of today's piece is heard pretty frequently, but it's brought to mind by the calls from protesters of Julian "WikiLeaks" Assange. The UK courts have determined that he can be extradited to Sweden to face charges of sexual misconduct (or whatever they're calling it). He doesn't want to go. I don't blame him, innocent or not.
Let's look at it from the perspective of the 100% not-guilty-of-the-charges standpoint (and here's where I say that I don't have an opinion on Assange's guilt-or-not. I'm not saying this guy's a saint, clearly he's not. But I'm also saying that apparently one of the women who are bringing these charges was or is a prostitute, so there's a lot of sin to go around...) Anyway, If I tell you that the second you step out of your house I'm going to arrest you, put you in jail, and put you on trial for murder- would you leave your house? Regardless of how innocent you are, regardless of how frivolous the lawsuit is, I guaran-fucking-tee you that you're at least going to think twice before setting foot outside. Why? Because NO ONE, no matter how innocent, wants their liberty revoked for any period of time. Even if it's like six hours before your mom can scrape together the money to pay the 10% to the bondsman (who then keeps like 10% of that anyway). So if you're Julian, and the courts even grant you bail, it's gonna be on the order of at least a million bucks, so mom has to put together $100,000 and then you know she's gonna lose at least $10,000 of that- all because I'm making some shit up and have had you arrested.   And in Assange's case, I'm willing to bet Sweden is pursuing the sexual misconduct (we'll just stick with that term) under pressure from other international bodies to get Assange in jail for something, anything, while there's a case built against him for being the mastermind at wikileaks.

So the next time someone goes spouting off with the "well, if he's innocent then why doesn't he just turn himself in" line of bullshit, slap 'em in the face with a nice, juicy bass and then explain how stupid they sound.