Your take on the story reminds me of a novel I just read, which has been in the news lately because it's on Obama's summer reading list. Lush Life by Richard Price describes Eric Cash, who gets mugged on the lower east side with two companions. The first is so drunk he just falls over. Eric hands over his wallet. The third says something like "Night tonight, man." He gets shot and killed by the mugger.

Because of what turns out to be questionable eyewitness testimony, the police come to suspect Eric Cash, and they interrogate him. No torture, but the question him aggressively because they don't believe there was a mugging. Most of the novel is about Eric and the cops trying to deal with this screw-up. Eric's life turns empty, and the cops have alienated the one person who got a look at the killer.

The novel is meant to also be about the clash between the old Lower East Side, a ghetto, and the new "lush life" there, where 28 year-olds feel old and everybody is drinking absinthe cocktails and the like. In fact, the black characters get short shrift. But it's great on the psychology of the falsely accused, the different kinds of trauma that crime creates. It's nothing like enslavement or waterboarding, but I'm glad the president is reading it.