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.
Darryl Hunt was an African-American man from Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who, in 1984, was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the rape and the murder of Deborah Sykes, a young white newspaper copy editor. After being convicted in that case, Hunt was tried in 1987 for the 1983 murder of Arthur Wilson, a 57-year-old black man of Winston-Salem. Both convictions were overturned on appeal in 1989. Hunt was tried again in the Wilson case in 1990; he was acquitted by an all-white jury. He was tried again on the Sykes charges in 1991; he was convicted.
Roger Keith Coleman was a convicted murderer and rapist from Grundy, Virginia, US, who was executed for the rape and murder in March 1981 of his sister-in-law, Wanda McCoy. That day, he had been laid off from work.
Kirk Noble Bloodsworth is a former Maryland waterman and the first American sentenced to death to be exonerated post-conviction by DNA testing.
Janine Kerrie Balding was a homicide victim who was abducted, raped and murdered by a homeless gang of five on 8 September 1988, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Balding's murder is often compared to the 1986 murder of Sydney nurse Anita Cobby.
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.
Richard Alexander is an Indiana man who was wrongfully convicted of rape and later exonerated by DNA evidence. Years later, on September 17, 2020, Alexander was charged with the murder of Catherine Minix, who was found stabbed to death. Minix had previously filed a protective order against Alexander for domestic violence.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
FamilyTreeDNA is a division of Gene by Gene, a commercial genetic testing company based in Houston, Texas. FamilyTreeDNA offers analysis of autosomal DNA, Y-DNA, and mitochondrial DNA to individuals for genealogical purpose. With a database of more than two million records, it is the most popular company worldwide for Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA, and the fourth most popular for autosomal DNA. In Europe, it is the most common also for autosomal DNA. FamilyTreeDNA as a division of Gene by Gene were acquired by MYDNA, Inc., an Australian company, in January 2021.
Johnny Briscoe is an American man falsely convicted of rape and other crimes and subsequently exonerated by DNA evidence.
Teresa Elena De Simone was murdered in Southampton, England, in 1979. Her murder led to one of the longest proven cases of a miscarriage of justice in English legal history. The murder occurred outside the Tom Tackle pub and was the subject of a three-year police investigation which resulted in the arrest of Sean Hodgson. Hodgson was convicted of the murder by a unanimous jury verdict in 1982 and was sentenced to life imprisonment. After serving 27 years in prison he was exonerated and released in March 2009. DNA analysis of semen samples that had been preserved from the original crime scene showed that they could not have come from him.
The murder of Linda Cook was committed in Portsmouth on 9 December 1986. The subsequent trial led to a miscarriage of justice when Michael Shirley, an 18-year-old Royal Navy sailor, was wrongly convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1992 his case was highlighted as one of 110 possible miscarriages of justice in a report presented to the Home Office by the National Association of Probation Officers and justice groups Liberty and Conviction. His conviction was eventually quashed in 2003 by the Court of Appeal after the DNA profile extracted from semen samples recovered from the victim's body was proven not to be his. Cook's murder took place shortly after six sexual assaults had been committed in the Buckland area of the city, and the killer was initially dubbed the Beast of Buckland by the news media. When police revealed that footprint evidence had been recovered and launched a search for matching shoes, the case became known as the "Cinderella murder". Because of the brutal nature of the murder and the preceding sex attacks, Hampshire police were under public pressure to quickly make an arrest.
Cornelius Dupree Jr. is an American who was declared innocent of a 1980 conviction for aggravated robbery, which was alleged to have been committed during a rape in 1979. He was paroled in July 2010 after serving 30 years of a 75-year prison sentence in Texas. Prosecutors cleared him of the crime after a test of his DNA profile did not match traces of semen evidence from the case. Dupree, who was represented by the Innocence Project, spent more time in prison in Texas than any other inmate who was eventually exonerated by DNA evidence.
Clarence Arnold Elkins Sr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of his mother-in-law, Judith Johnson, and the rape and assault of his wife's niece, Brooke Sutton. He was convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of his wife's six-year-old niece who testified that Elkins was the perpetrator.
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.
Juan A. Rivera Jr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted three times for the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan, Illinois. He was convicted twice on the basis of a confession that he said was coerced. No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene. In 2015 he received a $20 million settlement from Lake County, Illinois for wrongful conviction, formerly the largest settlement of its kind in United States history.
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.
Eddie Lee Mosley was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least eight women in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, between 1973 and 1987. He was arrested in 2001 following the results of a DNA profiling test, after being the prime suspect in several murders for many years. Before his arrest, two other men were wrongly convicted of several murders later attributed to Mosley: Frank Lee Smith, who spent 15 years in prison and died behind bars before he could be exonerated, and Jerry Townsend, who spent 22 years in prison before being released. Mosley's true victim count is unknown, with authorities speculating that he committed at least 16 murders and dozens of rapes.
James Jerold Koedatich is an American serial killer who was sentenced to death for the killings of two women in Morris County, New Jersey, which he committed during the final months of 1982, after having been previously paroled for the 1971 murder of his roommate in Florida. Koedatich had killed a fellow inmate in 1973, but that was ruled to be self-defense.
References
- 1 2 3 "Maurice Hastings: US man in prison for 38 years freed by new DNA evidence". BBC News. October 29, 2022.
- ↑ "Maurice Hastings: Man who spent 38 years in jail for murder freed after test showed DNA found on victim's body was not his". Sky News.
- 1 2 Davis, The People's Vanguard of Davis PO Box 4715 (October 29, 2022). "Exonerated: Conviction of Maurice Hastings Vacated in 1983 Murder".
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - 1 2 3 4 5 Los Angeles, Associated Press (October 29, 2022). "Man released from California prison after 38 years following DNA test". The Guardian.
- ↑ Sottile, Zoe (2023-03-05). "After serving 38 years for a murder he didn't commit, Maurice Hastings has finally been declared innocent". CNN. Retrieved 2023-12-22.