Related Research Articles
Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that is committed to exonerating individuals who have been wrongly convicted, through the use of DNA testing and working to reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. The group cites various studies estimating that in the United States between 1% and 10% of all prisoners are innocent. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld who gained national attention in the mid-1990s as part of the "Dream Team" of lawyers who formed part of the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case.
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.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Cases of wrongful execution are cited as an argument by opponents of capital punishment, while proponents say that the argument of innocence concerns the credibility of the justice system as a whole and does not solely undermine the use of the death penalty.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Timothy Brian Cole was an American military veteran and a Texas Tech University student wrongfully convicted of raping a fellow student in 1985.
Centurion is a non-profit organization located in Princeton, New Jersey, with a mission to exonerate innocent individuals who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life sentences or death.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.
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.
The Illinois Innocence Project, a member of the national Innocence Project network, is a non-profit legal organization that works to exonerate wrongfully convicted people and reform the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
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.
Ricky Jackson, Ronnie Bridgeman and Wiley Bridgeman are African Americans who were wrongfully convicted of murder as young men in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1975 and sentenced to death. Their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 1977. They were imprisoned for decades before each of the three was exonerated in late 2014. Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman were released that year.
Joseph Sledge Jr. was an American man who was wrongly convicted of the murders of two women, Josephine and Aileen Davis, for which he was imprisoned for over 36 years before being exonerated by new DNA evidence. His case represents the longest duration of incarceration for a case that has been overturned by DNA evidence, and he was the longest-serving inmate to have been exonerated in North Carolina.
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.
Craig Richard Coley is an American man who was wrongfully convicted of a double murder in Simi Valley, California, and spent 39 years in jail. He was pardoned by the governor of California in 2017 because DNA testing, not available at his original trial, did not support his conviction.
Muhammad Abdul Aziz is an American man who was wrongfully convicted in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X – a conviction that was overturned in November 2021, decades after he was paroled in 1985. Aziz maintained his innocence; and Mujahid Abdul Halim, who confessed to the murder, insisted that Aziz and Khalil Islam, another man who was convicted along with them, were innocent.
Hubert Nathan Myers and Clifford Williams are two African American men exonerated for First-Degree Murder and attempted murder after 42 years due to eyewitness misidentification, ineffective assistance of counsel and official misconduct. They are the first exonerees freed based on an investigation by a Conviction Integrity Unit in Florida.
Kevin Bernard Strickland is an African American man who was wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury in 1979 of killing three people in Kansas City, Missouri. No physical evidence linked him to the scene of the crime and the only alleged witness later recanted her testimony that Strickland was involved, stating that she was coerced by police. Strickland was given a life sentence. In 2021, he garnered national attention after former prosecutors in his case said that he was innocent and called for his release.
References
- ↑ "Dontae Sharpe: 'My 26-year fight to prove my innocence'". BBC News.
- ↑ Jonah Kaplan (July 10, 2021). "Exonerated of murder, Dontae Sharpe seeks full pardon from Gov. Cooper". ABC11/WTVD-TV .
- ↑ "Dontae Sharpe". NAACP, N.C.
- ↑ "Dontae Sharpe's long road: The anatomy and aftermath of a Wrongful Convictions Clinic exoneration". Duke Law School . November 7, 2019.
- 1 2 "Man Pardoned After Spending 24 Years in Prison for Murder". New York Times. Retrieved 2021-11-12.
- ↑ "Dontae Sharpe: US man wrongfully imprisoned for 26 years pardoned". BBC News. 2021-11-12. Retrieved 2021-11-12.