Paul Kenneth Bernardo, also known as Paul Jason Teale, is a Canadian serial rapist and serial killer dubbed the Scarborough Rapist, the Schoolgirl Killer and, together with his former wife Karla Homolka, one of the Ken and Barbie Killers. He is known for initially committing a series of rapes in Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, between 1987 and 1990, before committing three murders with Homolka; among these victims was Karla's younger sister, Tammy Homolka.
David Milgaard was a Canadian man who was wrongfully convicted for the 1969 rape and murder of nursing student Gail Miller in Saskatoon and imprisoned for 23 years. He was eventually released and exonerated. Up until his death, he lived in Alberta and was employed as a community support worker. Milgaard was also a public speaker who advocated for the wrongfully convicted and for all prisoners' rights.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when an unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
The Parole Officer is a 2001 British comedy film, directed by John Duigan. The film follows a diverse group of former criminals as they assist their probation officer in proving his innocence after a murder accusation.
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is a 2006 true crime book by John Grisham, his only nonfiction title as of 2020. The book tells the story of Ronald 'Ron' Keith Williamson of Ada, Oklahoma, a former minor league baseball player who was wrongly convicted in 1988 of the rape and murder of Debra Sue Carter in Ada and was sentenced to death. After serving 11 years on death row, he was exonerated by DNA evidence and other material introduced by the Innocence Project and was released in 1999.
Douglas Echols was convicted in a 1986 rape case. In 2002, his charges were finally cleared through DNA testing after he served over five years in prison. In 2005, a resolution was introduced in the Georgia Assembly by Representatives Tom Bordeaux and Chuck Sims requesting $1.6 million as compensation for his incarceration; however, the resolution was not approved.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
The Poughkeepsie Tapes is a 2007 American pseudo-documentary horror film written, directed, edited, and co-developed by John Erick Dowdle. It is about the murders of a serial killer in Poughkeepsie, New York, told through interviews and footage from a cache of the killer's snuff films.
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
Seeking Justice is a 2011 action thriller film starring Nicolas Cage, January Jones and Guy Pearce. The film was directed by Roger Donaldson and produced by Tobey Maguire, Ram Bergman and James D. Stern. Filming took place in New Orleans. The first trailer was released in September 2011.
The innocent prisoner's dilemma, or parole deal, is a detrimental effect of a legal system in which admission of guilt can result in reduced sentences or early parole. When an innocent person is wrongly convicted of a crime, legal systems which need the individual to admit guilt — as, for example, a prerequisite step leading to parole — punish an innocent person for their integrity, and reward a person lacking in integrity. There have been cases where innocent prisoners were given the choice between freedom, in exchange for claiming guilt, and remaining imprisoned and telling the truth. Individuals have died in prison rather than admit to crimes that they did not commit.
Brian Keith Banks is a former American football player. He signed with the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League (NFL) on April 3, 2013. Banks signed as an undrafted free agent with the Las Vegas Locomotives of the United Football League (UFL) in 2012.
The California Innocence Project is a non-profit based at California Western School of Law in San Diego, California, United States, which provides pro bono legal services to individuals who maintain their factual innocence of crime(s) for which they have been convicted. It is an independent chapter of the Innocence Project. Its mission is to exonerate wrongly convicted inmates through the use of DNA and other evidences.
Michael "Mike" Semanchik is the Executive Director of The Innocence Center (TIC) and former Managing Attorney at the California Innocence Project (CIP). As part of his work with CIP, he has been involved in many cases involving the exoneration of previously convicted prisoners, working closely with the organization's director, Justin Brooks, and also preparing petitions for many of CIP's clients. After working at CIP while still a law student at California Western School of Law, following graduation in 2010 he became an investigator and then a staff attorney there.
Dora and the Lost City of Gold is a 2019 American adventure comedy film directed by James Bobin from a screenplay written by Nicholas Stoller and Matthew Robinson and a story by Tom Wheeler and Stoller. It is loosely a live-action adaptation of the animated television series Dora the Explorer created by Chris Gifford, Valerie Walsh Valdes, and Eric Weiner. The film stars Isabela Moner, Eugenio Derbez, Michael Peña, Eva Longoria, with Danny Trejo as the voice of Boots. The titular Lost City of Gold is based on the legendary Inca city, Paititi. Dora and the Lost City of Gold was produced by Paramount Players and Nickelodeon Movies in association with Walden Media, MRC and Burr! Productions, and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
Alissa Leanne Bjerkhoel is an American litigation coordinator at the California Innocence Project (CIP), a law school clinic that investigates cases of factual innocence while training law students. Bjerkhoel was born in Truckee, California, and later graduated from California Western School of Law (CWSL) after previously obtaining a B.A. degree She has been an attorney with CIP since 2008. Bjerkhoel has served as counsel for CIP on numerous criminal cases, and achieved the legal exoneration of a number of convicted prisoners. Bjerkhoel serves as CIP's in-house DNA expert and also serves as a panel attorney with the nonprofit law firms Appellate Defenders, Inc. (ADI) and Sixth District Appellate Program (SDAP). She is a member of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Bjerkhoel has won a number of awards.
The Kitchen is a 2019 American crime film written and directed by Andrea Berloff in her directorial debut. It is based on the DC/Vertigo Comics limited series of the same name by Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle. The film stars Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish, and Elisabeth Moss as the wives of Irish American mobsters who take over organized crime operations in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the late 1970s, after the FBI arrests their husbands. The film also features Domhnall Gleeson, James Badge Dale, Brian d'Arcy James, Jeremy Bobb, Margo Martindale, Common, and Bill Camp in supporting roles.
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark is a 2019 supernatural horror film directed by André Øvredal, based on the book series of the same name by Alvin Schwartz. The screenplay was adapted by the Hageman Brothers, from a screen story by Guillermo del Toro, as well as Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. The film, an international co-production of the United States and Canada, stars Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush, Austin Zajur, Natalie Ganzhorn, Austin Abrams, Dean Norris, Gil Bellows, and Lorraine Toussaint.
Backtrace is a 2018 American action crime film directed by Brian A. Miller, and starring Sylvester Stallone, Matthew Modine and Ryan Guzman. The film was released as video on demand and limited theatrical release by Lionsgate Premiere on December 14, 2018 in the United States.
Clemency is a 2019 American drama film written and directed by Chinonye Chukwu. It stars Alfre Woodard, Richard Schiff, Danielle Brooks, Michael O'Neill, Richard Gunn, Wendell Pierce, and Aldis Hodge. The plot follows the lives of prison warden Bernadine Williams (Woodard) and death row inmate Anthony Woods (Hodge).
