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 a grossly 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.
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.
Wayne Patrick "Pat" Priest was a San Antonio, Texas state court judge who has presided over a number of nationally and regionally important cases.
After Innocence is a 2005 American documentary film about men who were exonerated from death row by DNA evidence. Directed by Jessica Sanders, the film took the Special Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
Kerry Max Cook is an American former death row inmate who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards in 1977.
Wrongful execution is a miscarriage of justice occurring when an innocent person is killed 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.
The Exonerated is a made-for-cable television film that dramatizes the stories of six people, some of whom, were wrongfully convicted of murder and other offenses, placed on death row, and later exonerated and freed after serving varying years in prison. It was based on a successful stage play of the same name written by Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank and first aired on the former CourtTV cable television network on January 27, 2005. It is directed by Bob Balaban and was produced by Radical Media.
San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival (SAICFF) was a film festival located in San Antonio, Texas. It was founded and organized by Doug Phillips. The Best of Festival or Jubilee Award carried a $101,000 cash prize. The festival was closed in December 2013 due to Vision Forum Ministries shutting down.
Al Reinert was an American journalist, film director, screenwriter and producer. He co-wrote the screenplays for the Ron Howard film Apollo 13 and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, but is best known for directing and producing For All Mankind, an award-winning 1989 documentary about NASA's Apollo program. He died of lung cancer at his home in Wimberley, Texas on December 31, 2018.
Presumed Guilty is a documentary following Antonio Zúñiga, who was falsely convicted of murder. It holds the box office record for documentary in Mexico, previously held by Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. According to The Economist, this is "by far the most successful documentary in Mexico's history." The plot of the film is the attempt by two young Mexican attorneys to exonerate a wrongly convicted man by making a documentary. The film was released theatrically at about the same time the Oscar nominated films such as Black Swan and The King's Speech were being shown on cinema screens in Mexico. It surpassed both of those films at the box office. The film was televised by Televisa on Channel 2 in the fall of 2011.
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.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.
The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School, Michigan State University College of Law and the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society. The Registry was co-founded in 2012 with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law to provide detailed information about known exonerations in the United States since 1989. As of February 6, 2020, the Registry has 2,551 known exonerations in the United States since 1989. The National Registry does not include more than 1,800 defendants cleared in 15 large-scale police scandals that came to light between 1989 and March 7, 2017, in which officers systematically framed innocent defendants.
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.
Nathan Blenner (1965–1985) was a 20-year-old man from Queens, New York who was kidnapped in 1985 outside his home. His body was found with a single fatal bullet wound in his head. Willie Stuckey and David McCallum, both just 16 at the time, were arrested and allegedly confessed to killing Blenner during an attempted car theft and later alleged to having a joyride in the victim's car.
Pamela Colloff is an American journalist. She has contributed to The New Yorker, but a majority of her work has been featured in Texas Monthly, where she was an executive editor. As of 2017, Colloff is a senior reporter at ProPublica and a writer-at-large at The New York Times Magazine.
Deborah S. Esquenazi is a documentary filmmaker, writer, radio producer, instructor, and investigative journalist. She is a native Texan and currently resides in Austin, Texas with her wife and two children. She is the acclaimed director of the award-winning documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four, as well as half a dozen short films and essays. Her work focuses on the intersections of mythology & justice, and identity & power. Esquenazi is a Rockwood JustFilms Ford Foundation Fellow, Sundance Creative Producing Lab Fellow (2015), Firelight Media Producers’ Lab Fellow (2015), IFP Spotlight on Docs (2015), Artist on two Artplace America commissions (2015), and Sundance Documentary Film Fellow (2014).
Outcry is a 2020 documentary mini-series written and directed by Pat Kondelis, about the real-life story of high school football star Greg Kelley, who was arrested, convicted and jailed for sexual assault of a 4-year-old boy, as well as his support system that pushed back in their quest for truth and justice. The Showtime mini-series premiered on July 5, 2020.
