Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was an American middleweight boxer, wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for murder, until released following a petition of habeas corpus after almost 20 years in prison.
Johnny Leartice Robinson was an American criminal executed by the State of Florida for the 1985 murder of Beverly St. George.
Cameron Todd Willingham was a likely innocent American man who was convicted and executed for the murder of his three young children by arson at the family home in Corsicana, Texas, on December 23, 1991. Since Willingham's 2004 execution, significant controversy has arisen over the legitimacy of the guilty verdict and the interpretation of the evidence that was used to convict him of arson and murder.
Susan Denise Atkins was an American convicted murderer who was a member of Charles Manson's "Family". Manson's followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations in California over a period of five weeks in the summer of 1969. Known within the Manson family as Sadie Mae Glutz or Sexy Sadie, Atkins was convicted for her participation in eight of these killings, including the most notorious, the Tate murders in 1969. She was sentenced to death, which was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment when the California Supreme Court invalidated all death sentences issued prior to 1972. Atkins was incarcerated until her death in 2009. At the time of her death, she was California's longest-serving female inmate, long since surpassed by fellow Manson family members Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel.
Phyllis Ann George was an American businesswoman, actress, and sportscaster. In 1975, George was hired as a reporter and co-host of the CBS Sports pre-show The NFL Today, becoming one of the first women to hold an on-air position in national televised sports broadcasting. She also served as the First Lady of Kentucky from 1979 to 1983.
Gary E. Dotson is an American man who was the first person to be exonerated of a criminal conviction by DNA evidence. In May 1979, he was found guilty and sentenced to 25 to 50 years' imprisonment for rape, and another 25 to 50 years for aggravated kidnapping, the terms to be served concurrently. This conviction was upheld by the appellate court in 1981. In 1985, the accusing witness recanted her testimony, which had been the main evidence against Dotson. He was not exonerated or pardoned at that time, but due to popular belief that he was a victim of a false rape accusation, Dotson went through a series of paroles and re-incarcerations until DNA evidence proved his innocence in 1988. Dotson was subsequently cleared of his conviction.
Elmo Patrick "Pat" Sonnier was a convicted American murderer and rapist in Louisiana who was executed by electrocution at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Louisiana on April 5, 1984. Sonnier was sentenced to death on April 25, 1978, for the November 5, 1977, rape and murder of Loretta Ann Bourque, 18, and the murder of David LeBlanc, 17. His younger brother, Eddie, was sentenced to life in prison.
Hillcrest High School is a public four year high school located in Country Club Hills, Illinois. It is part of Bremen High School District 228 which also includes Tinley Park High School, Oak Forest High School, and Bremen High School. The name "Hillcrest" aside from the obvious connotation of being "the highest point of a hill", is a portmanteau of the two towns which the school primarily serves: Country Club Hills and Hazel Crest.
On November 2, 2002, U.S. Marine Corps Major Michael Brown attempted an indecent assault on a Filipina bartender in Okinawa, Japan. The bartender accused Brown of attempting to rape her and of throwing her cell phone into a nearby river; Brown denied the rape charges. The victim later recanted and attempted to withdraw the accusation, though prosecutors presented evidence that she had received a cash payment just before doing so.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Joseph H. Burrows was an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of farmer William E. Dulan at his home in Iroquois County, Illinois, in 1988. After his conviction and sentence to death in 1989, Burrows was held for nearly five years on death row.
The Jeanine Nicarico murder case was a complex and influential homicide investigation and prosecution in which two men, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, both Latinos, were wrongfully convicted of abduction, rape and murder in 1985 in DuPage County, Illinois. They were both sentenced to death. The case was scrutinized during appeals for being weak in evidence.
Brian James Dugan is a convicted rapist and serial killer active between 1983 and 1985 in Chicago's western suburbs. He was known for having informally confessed in 1985 to the February 1983 abduction, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico of Naperville, Illinois, which was a highly publicized case. He was already in custody for two other rapes and murders, one of a woman in July 1984 and the other an 8-year-old girl in May 1985. He was sentenced to life after pleading guilty to the latter two crimes.
Rolando Cruz is an American man known for having been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, along with co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez, for the 1983 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County, Illinois. The police had no substantive physical evidence linking the two men to the crime. Their first trial was jointly in 1987, and their statements were used against each other and a third defendant.
Marie Chapian is an American writer and radio ministry host. She is known for her writings on Christian diet programs, Christian devotional literature, and co-authoring biographies.
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.
Richard L. Samuels was a Cook County Circuit judge at the Sixth Municipal District Courthouse in Markham, Illinois, for nearly 30 years. His most (in)famous Case was the high profiled rape case against Gary Dotson during the 1970s and 1980s. Dotson is the first American man who was to be exonerated of a criminal conviction by DNA evidence.
Investigating Innocence is a nonprofit wrongful conviction advocacy organization that provides criminal defense investigations for inmates in the United States. Investigating Innocence was founded in 2013 by private investigator Bill Clutter to assist nationwide Innocence Project groups in investigating innocence claims. "Once we have a case that meets our criteria, we'll put private investigators to work on it. A lot of these cases need investigators," said Kelly Thompson, executive director of Investigating Innocence. Prior to his work on Investigating Innocence, Clutter was one of the founders of the Illinois Innocence Project. Investigating Innocence also has a board composed of exonerees that reviews incoming cases.
The Ford Heights Four were formerly imprisoned convicts, who were falsely accused and convicted of the double murder of Lawrence Lionberg and Carol Schmal in Ford Heights, Illinois, and later exonerated. Jimerson and Williams were sentenced to death, Adams to 75 years in prison and Rainge to life. Following the murder in 1978, the four spent almost two decades in prison before being released in 1996. This miscarriage of justice was due to false forensic testimony, coercion of a prosecution witness, perjury by another witness who had an incentive to lie, and prosecution and police misconduct. The DNA evidence uncovered in the investigation to clear their names eventually led to the arrest and conviction of the real killers.
The Larnoch Road murders were a high-profile double-murder case in Auckland, New Zealand. On 21 August 1989, Deane Wade Fuller-Sandys, a 21-year-old Auckland tyre-fitter, left home to go fishing. He never returned. His body was never found and authorities initially believed he probably drowned after being swept out to sea at West Auckland's Whatipu Beach, where his car was discovered shortly afterwards. Five days later, on 26 August 1989, Leah Romany Stephens, a 20-year old Auckland sex worker, also disappeared. Her skeletal remains were discovered in a forest near the Muriwai Golf Course three years later, in June 1992. Police enquiries at the time did not lead to an arrest in her case either.
