Kaufman County is a county in the northeastern area of the U.S. state of Texas. As of the 2020 census, its population was 145,310. Its county seat is Kaufman. Both the county, established in 1848, and the city were named for David S. Kaufman, a U.S. Representative and diplomat from Texas. Kaufman County is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.
Albert Henry DeSalvo was an American murderer and rapist who was active in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 1960s. He is known to have confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", a serial killer who murdered thirteen women in the Boston area between 1962 and 1964. Lack of physical evidence supported his confession, and he was only prosecuted in 1967 for a series of unrelated rapes, for which he was convicted and imprisoned until his death in 1973. His confessing to having murdered multiple women was disputed, and debates continued regarding which crimes he truly had committed.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is put to death by capital punishment. Opponents of capital punishment often cite cases of wrongful execution as arguments, while proponents argue that 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.
Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.
Kathryn Casey is an American writer of mystery novels and non-fiction books. She is best known for writing She Wanted It All, which recounts the case of Celeste Beard, who married an Austin multimillionaire only to convince her lesbian lover, Tracey Tarlton, to kill him.
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.
Allan B. Polunsky Unit is a prison in West Livingston, unincorporated Polk County, Texas, United States, located approximately 5 miles (8.0 km) southwest of Livingston along Farm to Market Road 350. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) operates the facility. The unit houses the State of Texas death row for men, and it has a maximum capacity of 2,900. Livingston Municipal Airport is located on the other side of FM 350. The unit, along the Big Thicket, is 60 miles (97 km) east of Huntsville.
On November 29, 2009, four police officers of Lakewood, Washington were fatally shot at the Forza coffee shop, located at 11401 Steele Street #108 South in the Parkland unincorporated area of Pierce County, Washington, near Tacoma. A gunman, later identified as Maurice Clemmons, entered the shop, shot the officers while they worked on laptops, and fled the scene with a single gunshot wound in his torso. After a massive two-day manhunt that spanned several nearby cities, an officer recognized Clemmons near a stalled car in south Seattle. When he refused orders to stop, he was shot and killed by a Seattle Police Department officer.
Juan Corona Vallejo was a Mexican serial killer who was convicted of the murders of 25 migrant farm workers found buried in peach orchards along the Feather River in Sutter County, California, in 1971. At the time, his crimes were among the most notorious in U.S. history. Until the discovery of Dean Corll's victims two years later, he was the deadliest known American serial killer.
Shattered: The True Story of a Mother's Love, a Husband's Betrayal, and a Cold-Blooded Texas Murder, by author and novelist Kathryn Casey, is a true-crime account of the killing of a pregnant woman whose body was discovered in 1999 in an upstairs closet in her home in Katy, Texas, near Houston. The book was published by HarperCollins in June 2010. Ms. Casey details numerous reasons that prove no one except David Temple had either motive or opportunity.
Michael Morton is an American who was wrongfully convicted in 1987 in a Williamson County, Texas court of the 1986 murder of his wife Christine Morton. He spent nearly 25 years in prison before he was exonerated by DNA evidence which supported his claim of innocence and pointed to the crime being committed by another individual. Morton was released from prison on October 4, 2011, and another man, Mark Alan Norwood, was convicted of the murder in 2013. The prosecutor in the case, Ken Anderson, was convicted of contempt of court for withholding evidence after the judge had ordered its release to the defense.
Deadly Little Secrets: The Minister, His Mistress, and a Heartless Texas Murder is a 2012 true crime book written by the non-fiction author and novelist Kathryn Casey and released by HarperCollins about the 2006 murder by Baptist minister Matt Baker of his 31-year-old wife, Kari Baker, and the staging of her death as a suicide.
The murder of Jennifer Cave occurred in the West Campus area of Austin, Texas. On August 18, 2005, Cave's body was discovered. In 2009, Chuck Lindell of the Austin American-Statesman called it the "most infamous West Campus crime".
The 211 Crew, is an American prison gang, active both in and out of prison, that was formed in 1995 at Colorado's Denver County Jail. It was linked to several high-profile murders and criminal investigations. Those included the assassination of Colorado Department of Corrections head Tom Clements. Due to a threatening letter sent by a Texas Aryan Brotherhood member, it was suspected to be linked to similar assassinations of Texas district attorney Mike McLelland, and his assistant prosecutor Mark Hasse, but a former Justice of the Peace was eventually indicted for those murders.
In 2013, two prosecutors and a prosecutor's wife were murdered in Kaufman County, Texas. The case gained national attention in the United States due to speculation that the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang was responsible, but this was later found to be untrue. Eric Lyle Williams, a former lawyer and justice of the peace whose theft case was prosecuted by two of the victims, was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to death for two of the murders. He was also charged with the murder of prosecutor Mark Hasse, but a decision was made not to prosecute him as he had already received a death sentence for the other murders. His wife, Kimberly Irene "Kim" Williams, was tried separately, and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
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.
William Paul "Bud" Thompson was an American criminal, spree killer, and self-described serial/contract killer. Convicted for three murders committed between March and April 1984 in California and Nevada, he later confessed to three additional murders in three other states. Sentenced to death for a Nevada killing, he withdrew his appeals and was subsequently executed in 1989.
Eugene Alvin Broxton is an American murderer and suspected serial killer. Convicted and sentenced to death for the May 1991 murder of a woman in Channelview, Texas, Broxton is also the sole suspect in four other murders for which he has never been convicted but remains the sole suspect.
William Lewis Reece is an American serial killer, rapist and kidnapper. In 2015, he was linked via DNA to the 1997 cold case murder of a woman in Oklahoma, for which he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death. Not long after, he confessed to three murders associated with the Texas Killing Fields, for which he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.
