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 first nonfiction title. 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, and edited by John Erick Dowdle from a story he co-wrote with his brother Drew Dowdle. It revolves around a serial killer's murders 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.
Swedish tourists Sven Urban Höglin, aged 23, and his fiancée Heidi Birgitta Paakkonen, aged 21, disappeared while tramping on the Coromandel Peninsula of New Zealand in 1989. Police, residents, and military personnel conducted the largest land-based search undertaken in New Zealand, attempting to find the couple. In December 1990, David Wayne Tamihere was convicted of murdering Höglin and Paakkonen, and sentenced to life imprisonment based largely on the testimony of three prison inmates.
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, including in the face of a plausible chance at release.
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.
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 and written by Nicholas Stoller and Matthew Robinson, from a story conceived by Stoller and Tom Wheeler. Based on the Nick Jr. animated television series Dora the Explorer, the film was theatrically released by Paramount Pictures in the United States on August 9, 2019, the same day the final then-unaired episode of Dora the Explorer aired there.
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.
The Art of Racing in the Rain is a 2019 American comedy-drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Mark Bomback, based on the 2008 novel of the same name by author Garth Stein. The film stars Milo Ventimiglia, Amanda Seyfried, Kevin Costner as the voice of Enzo and Parker as Enzo, the golden retriever.
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).
Archie Charles Williams is an American singer who appeared on season 15 of America's Got Talent. He was wrongfully incarcerated for 37 years in prison and released on March 21, 2019.
