About the Registry

The National Registry of Exonerations is a joint project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. We provide detailed information about every known exoneration in the United States since 1989—cases in which a person was wrongly convicted of a crime and later cleared of all the charges based on new evidence of innocence.

Exoneration News

Evidence of Concealed Jailhouse Deal Raises Questions About a Texas Execution
2/28/2014

​In February 2004, Cameron Willingham was executed in Texas for killing his three children by deliberately burning down his home. When reinvestigation revealed that the forensic evidence of arson was based on invalid science, the prosecution responded that Willingham was clearly guilty because he said so to a jailhouse informant. Now, a document recently discovered by the Innocence Project reveals that the informant was given a deal that reduced the charge against him in return for testimony against Willingham - a deal the informant and the prosecutor explicitly denied at trial. Willingham's case is similar to that of exoneree David Gavitt, who was convicted of the arson muder of his wife and two daughters in Michigan in 1986, and exonerated in 2012.

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We currently list more than 1,320 exonerations. For detailed information browse our ever-growing database.

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Featured Exonerations
Edgar Coker
State: VA
Date of Exoneration: 3/3/2014
In 2007, 16-year-old Edgar Coker pled guilty to raping a 14-year-old friend. He was exonerated in 2014 after the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia Law School and JustChildren Legal Aid Program presented evidence that the victim admitted she falsely accused him of rape. (Photo by Peter Cihelka of The Free-Lance Star)

Hien Juan Mai
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 2/28/2014
In June 2012, Houston police arrested Hien Juan Mai for possession of cocaine. Mai pled guilty and was sentenced to 120 days in jail. In July 2012 laboratory tests on the substance seized from Mai were negative for narcotics. In 2013 a petition for a new trial was filed, and in February 2014 the charge was dismissed.

Sabein Burgess
State: MD
Date of Exoneration: 2/21/2014
In 1995, Sabein Burgess was convicted of murder in Baltimore and sentenced to life in prison based on gunshot residue on his hands. He was exonerated in February 2014 after one of the real killers confessed, the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project presented an expert who testified the gunshot residue could have come from holding the victim, and the victim's son revealed he had seen the shooters and Burgess was not among them.

Mark Anderson
State: HI
Date of Exoneration: 2/19/2014
In 2011, Mark Anderson was convicted of threatening to kill two people with a knife, and sentenced to 9 days in jail and 5 years probation. The charge was dismissed in 2014 because the trial judge had excluded evidence that Anderson made no threats but merely tried to evict trespassers from property he managed.