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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

New Lake County Prosecutor Looks Back at First Year
12/10/2013
When Lake County, Illinois, State's Attorney Mike Nerheim ran for office in 2012, he promised to stop the pattern of wrongful convictions and police and prosecutorial misconduct that had plagued the county for years. One year in, former critics say that Nerheim has fundamentally changed the way his office deals with innocence claims.
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We currently list more than 1,250 exonerations. For detailed information browse our ever-growing database.

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For reports, graphs, summaries of our findings, criteria for exoneration, and more visit our Learn More section.

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Featured Exonerations
Timothy Johnson
State: GA
Date of Exoneration: 12/5/2013
In 1984, Timothy Johnson pled guilty to robbing and murdering a convenience store clerk and was sentenced to life in prison. He was granted a new trial in 2006 after presenting evidence that his plea was involuntary and his lawyer never talked to several alibi witnesses. He was acquitted by a jury on December 5, 2013. (Photograph by Woody Marshall for The Telegraph)

Cheydrick Britt
State: FL
Date of Exoneration: 11/20/2013
In 2004, Cheydrick Britt was convicted of raping his girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He was exonerated in 2013 after DNA tests eliminated Britt as the source of semen on the girl's clothing.

Derrick Deacon
State: NY
Date of Exoneration: 11/18/2013
In 1989, Derrick Deacon (embracing his attorney, Rebecca Freedman) was convicted of murder in Brooklyn, New York, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He was granted a new trial after evidence of the real killer surfaced in a federal investigation. On November 18, 2013, a jury acquitted him after deliberating nine minutes. (Photo by Riyad Hasan, New York Post)

Christopher Roesser
State: GA
Date of Exoneration: 11/18/2013
In 2008, Christopher Roesser was sentenced to life in prison for murder in Georgia. At a retrial in 2011, he presented new evidence that the chief prosecution witness had told police the shooting was self-defense; the jurors acquitted him of murder but deadlocked 11 to 1 for acquittal on manslaughter. On November 18, 2013, the Georgia Supreme Court dismissed the manslaughter charge.

Ryan Ferguson
State: MO
Date of Exoneration: 11/12/2013
In 2005, Ryan Ferguson was convicted of murder in Columbia, Missouri, and sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was granted a new trial because the prosecution withheld evidence that a key witness lied at trial. The charges were dismissed on November 12, 2013.