I've been stuck on how to move my story. A couple of men hired a bunch of people to break out a friend of theirs who they believed was being held in a high security government prison. They ended having to kill some guards and found out she wasn't there. A few days later they were caught and put in prison. The girl who was thought to be in that prison escapes from another one and finds out that her friends are in prison for trying to save her and she wants to break them out. I'm not exactly sure how to get these people out though. So far I had her send a video to a news station revealing herself to the public and telling them that the government had unlawfully kidnapped her. I was thinking that maybe the public would get mad and protest and they would free them, but I'm not convinced if it would be believable if people would believe it or consider it a hoax or just a conspiracy theory. Even if they did protest I'm not sure realistically if a government would free them given that they did commit some major crimes. I don't want these characters in prison for the rest of the story, but I can't think of a good way to get them out.
There may not be a way, depending on the prison. We had a guy serving life without parole escape from a medium-security state prison here last summer just by discovering a flaw in the physical security measures, so it happens. High security federal prison? Probably not, though if you want to read a possible way, check out David Baldacci's latest novel The Escape.
A government that is prepared to "unlawfully kidnap" a citizen is hardly likely to give in to a public protest. Even if the public protest over a video (if it is even broadcast) given that they live in a very repressive regime. Even if "the girl" is somebody with massive appeal (think Princess Diana), rather than a nonentity who could be kidnapped without anybody really noticing that she'd gone. Check out this thread for what a government thinks it can get away with. https://www.writingforums.org/threads/the-argentina-double-cross.137062/#post-1305635 Sorry, that doesn't really help to get her buddies out of jail!
How about them being released on some sort of legal loop hole? Something about some evidence that was used that shouldn't have been or one of the guards did not go through the right procedure when the attempted break out happened?
Apart from a violent (or sneaky) jailbreak, there is no way that two men who were responsible for the deaths of prison guards would ever be released. The only possibility is that the guards were killed by some other prisoners during the attempted rescue and neither the rescuers or the authorities knew about it until it somehow comes to light later. This still doesn't exonerate them completely, but perhaps they get sent to a minimum security prison and escape or are rescued.
I'm not really sure about how to free your prisoners. It sounds like it would be quite difficult, if they murdered people then they would be in quite a high security prison?? Maybe have them moved to a different prison and somehow escape on the way?
Prison Break! She is Michael Scofield. If she escaped from prison once she can do it again, with more people helping out it becomes easier. Just make it complicated and clever, kind of hard to point you in a direction though, without knowing specifics about the prison.
Here's an idea: The girl is an activist organizing a protest against a new law project. She was surprisingly put in jail and interrogated about what she knows of the bill. When she learns that her friends are now in prison, she tries to discover the secret about this bill.
