Francisco "Franky" Carrillo is an American Democratic politician from California. He was wrongfully convicted of the 1991 shooting murder of Donald Sarpy. His conviction was reversed by the Los Angeles County Superior Court on March 14, 2011, after he had served twenty years in prison. [1] Carrillo currently serves on the Los Angeles County Probation Oversight Commission. [2]
Carrillo's conviction relied on eyewitness testimony from six people. The witnesses later admitted they did not have a view of the shooter, and instead had been influenced by police officers, and each other, to identify Carrillo. Two men have since confessed to the crime, and stated Carrillo was not involved. [3]
Although always professing his innocence, Carrillo was found guilty at his second trial after his initial trial resulted in a hung jury, and subsequent appeals. After Carrillo's case was taken on by Ellen Eggers, the Northern California Innocence Project, and attorneys from Morrison & Foerster, LLP, he was able to conclusively prove his innocence.
Carrillo's story has twice been featured on the podcast Strangers by Lea Thau. His story is also told in the Netflix series The Innocence Files . [4]
In April 2021, Carrillo was selected by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to serve as the Chair of the Leadership Team of the county's Probation Oversight Commission. [5]
In April 2023, Carrillo announced his candidacy in the 2024 elections to represent California's 27th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He withdrew from the race in October 2023. [6]
In October 2023, he launched a campaign for State Assembly in district 52. [7]
Carrillo has three children. [4]
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.
Steven Allan Avery is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who had previously been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of sexual assault and attempted murder. After serving 18 years of a 32-year sentence, Avery was exonerated by DNA testing and released in 2003, only to be charged with murder two years later.
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is a 2006 true crime book by John Grisham, his only nonfiction title as of 2020. 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.
Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise. Attempts to exonerate convicts are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially where new evidence is put forth after the execution has taken place. The transitive verb, "to exonerate" can also mean to informally absolve one from blame.
Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) is a California State Prison for men. It was opened in June 1987, and covers 866 acres (350 ha) located in Ione, California. The prison has a staff of 1,242 and an annual operating budget of $157 million.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Proposition 34 was a California ballot measure that was decided by California voters at the statewide election on November 6, 2012. It sought to repeal Proposition 17, originally passed by voters in 1972, thus abolishing the death penalty in California.
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.
Making a Murderer is an American true crime documentary television series written and directed by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos. The show tells the story of Steven Avery, a man from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who served 18 years in prison (1985–2003) after his wrongful conviction for the sexual assault and attempted murder of Penny Beerntsen. He was later charged with and convicted of the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach. The connected story is that of Avery's nephew Brendan Dassey, who was accused and convicted as an accessory in the murder of Halbach.
John Wesley Raley III is an American attorney based in the state of Texas. He is best known for his work in the legal defense of Michael Morton and Hannah Overton.
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.
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.
Blind Injustice is an opera based on the stories of six people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes in Ohio, and who eventually had their convictions overturned through the work of the Ohio Innocence Project. The opera was commissioned by the Cincinnati Opera; it was written by librettist David Cote and composer Scott Davenport Richards. The libretto was based in part on the book Blind Injustice by Ohio Innocence Project co-founder Mark Godsey, and on interviews with those whose stories are portrayed. The opera opened at Cincinnati Opera on July 22, 2019.
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.
Dream/Killer, stylized onscreen as dream/killer, is a 2015 documentary film about the wrongful conviction of Ryan Ferguson based on the testimony of a classmate who said that he’d dreamt that Ferguson was the killer. The film details the case and Bill Ferguson's journey to free his son. It debuted at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. It aired in August 2016 as a two-hour special on the Investigation Discovery network. The documentary was later released on Netflix in 2019.
Lara Bazelon is an American academic and journalist. She is a law professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law where she holds the Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy and directs the Criminal & Juvenile and Racial Justice Clinics. She is the former director of the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles. Her clinical work as a law professor focuses on the exoneration of the wrongfully convicted.
Glynn Ray Simmons is an American man who was wrongfully convicted in the U.S. state of Oklahoma in 1975 of the 1974 murder of Carolyn Sue Rogers. After having been exonerated, he was released from prison in 2023 at the age of 70, after having been imprisoned for 48 years.