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Featured Exonerations Archive
Nicole Harris
State: IL
Date of Exoneration: 6/17/2013
Nicole Harris was convicted of murdering her four-year-old son in 2005 and sentenced to 30 years in prison based on a false confession coerced by police after 27 hours of interrogation. The conviction was reversed after Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions successfully argued that the boy's six-year-old brother, who said the death was accident, was wrongly barred from testifying.

David Munchinski
State: PA
Date of Exoneration: 6/14/2013
David Munchinski was convicted of a 1977 double murder in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and sentenced to life in prison. He was exonerated after his daughter and students at the Innocence Instutute at Park Point University uncovered evidence withheld by the prosecution that the sole eyewitness had lied and evidence that others were the real killers. (Innocence Institute of Park Point University photo by Darlene Natale)

Robert Nelson
State: MO
Date of Exoneration: 6/12/2013
Robert Nelson was convicted of rape and robbery in Kansas City in 1984 and sentenced to 98 years based on the victim's identification. Nelson was released after DNA tests requested by the Midwest Innocence Project and prosecutors excluded Nelson as the attacker and matched two other men, one of whom is serving a life  sentence for a 1992 rape. (Nelson and his sister, Sea Dunnell, after his release. Photo by Jim Barcus, The Kansas City Star)

Jerry Lee Jenkins
State: MD
Date of Exoneration: 6/7/2013
In 1987, Jerry Lee Jenkins was convicted of rape in Maryland and sentenced to life in prison, based on a shaky identification by the victim and blood test evidence. The physical evidence was then lost for 14 years, and when it was finally found, DNA tests excluded Jenkins and matched a convicted serial rapist serving a life sentence in Virginia.

Larry Lane Hugee
State: MD
Date of Exoneration: 5/16/2013
Larry Lane Hugee (flanked by University of Baltimore Innocence Project lawyers Joseph Owens and Michele Nethercott) was convicted of robbing a store in Fruitland, Maryland in 2004 and sentenced to 25 years in prison. In 2012, Hugee was released because the prosecution failed to disclose that a key witness had a history of drug and mental problems. Charges were dismissed on May 16, 2013. (Photo courtesy of University of Baltimore Innocence Project)

Randolph Arledge
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 5/3/2013
In 1984, Randolph Arledge was convicted of murder in Corsicana, Texas based on false testimony from two witnesses who claimed he confessed to the 1981 crime. The Innocence Project obtained DNA testing of evidence that excluded Arledge and linked to another man who stabbed a woman and committed numerous other crimes after Arledge was convicted. (Photo is of Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck and Arledge on the day of his release)

Nathaniel Johnson
State: NY
Date of Exoneration: 4/30/2013
Nathaniel Johnson was convicted of armed robbery in Buffalo, New York in 2010 and sentenced to five years in prison. He was exonerated after the real robber was identified through the efforts of a private investigator and the Erie County District Attorney's Office. (Photo by Robert Kirkham, courtesy of the Buffalo News)

Joseph Awe
State: WI
Date of Exoneration: 4/29/2013
Joseph Awe, shown with his wife, Irene, after his release from prison, was convicted of arson and sentenced to three years in prison in 2007 for burning down J.J.'s Pub in Harrisville, Wisconson. His conviction was vacated and the case dismissed in 2013 after new forensic evidence proved the fire was accidental.  (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin State Journal)

Maligie Conteh
State: VA
Date of Exoneration: 4/22/2013
Maligie Conteh was convicted of robbery in 2010 in Alexandria, VA after the victim spotted him riding a bike just minutes after the robbery and told police he was one of the robbers, despite differences in his clothing. Conteh was exonerated in 2013 when a new defense team proved that he was posting on his Facebook account at the time of the crime.

Megan Winfrey
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 4/17/2013
In 2007, Megan Winfrey, her father, and her brother were charged with murdering a neighbor in Coldspring, TX, based on evidence from a dog scent lineup. Megan and her father were convicted, but her brother was acquitted when an expert showed the dogs responded to their handler's cues, not to any scent. Winfrey's father was exonerated in 2010, and in April 2013, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered Megan Winfrey acquitted.

Jeramie Davis
State: WA
Date of Exoneration: 4/11/2013
Jeramie Davis was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the 2007 murder of 74-year-old John Allen in Spokane, WA. In 2011 DNA and fingerprints linked another man to the crime, Julio Davila. Davila was convicted of murder in 2012. Prosecutors  argued that the two men could have committed the crime together, but there was no evidence linking them. Murder charge against Davis were dismissed on April 11, 2013.

David Ranta
State: NY
Date of Exoneration: 3/21/2013
David Ranta was convicted in 1991 of the attempted robbery of a diamond courier and the murder of a rabbi in Brooklyn, New York. The Kings County District Attorney's Office Conviction Integrity Unit re-investigated the case and determined that police had coached witness identifications, and that authorities had provided favors and made deals with numerous witnesses who lied to implicate Ranta. The District Attorney's Office dismissed the case on March 21, 2013.

LaMonte Armstrong
State: NC
Date of Exoneration: 3/18/2013
In 1995, LaMonte Armstrong was convicted of the 1988 murder of a university professor in Greensboro, North Carolina, based on testimony from a police informant known as a notorious liar. After the Duke University Law School Wrongful Convictions Clinic discovered that police had hidden evidence of Armstrong's innocence the informant recanted his testimony, and the prosecutors matched a crime scene palm print to a convicted murderer. Charges were dismissed in March 2013 by agreement with the prosecution.

Johnny Williams
State: CA
Date of Exoneration: 3/8/2013
Johnny Williams (left, with his attorney, Melissa Dague O'Connell) was convicted in 2000 of sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl in Oakland, California because of mistaken witness identifications. The Northern California Innocence Project and the Alameda County District Attorney's Office requested DNA testing, which excluded Williams as the attacker. His convictions were dismissed in March 2013.

Ronald Ross
State: CA
Date of Exoneration: 2/22/2013
In 2006, Ronald Ross was convicted of attempted murder in Alameda County, California and sentenced to 25 years to life. Lawyers from the Northern California Innocence Project and the firm of Keker & Van Nest spent 5 years developing evidence that three eyewitnesses had lied. One later said his father was the true gunman. On February 22, 2013, Ross's conviction was dismissed and he was released. (Photo courtesy of the Northern California Innocence Project)

Kenneth Wayne Boyd, Jr.
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 2/15/2013
Kenneth Wayne Boyd was convicted in 1999 of a drug-related shooting in Center, Texas, that left three people dead and two wounded. After District Attorney Karren Price left office, her successor found scores of pages of reports showing that prosecution witnesses had lied at the trial. Boyd was freed after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found that Price had withheld critical evidence of his innocence.

Frederick Mardlin
State: MI
Date of Exoneration: 2/14/2013
In 2007, Frederick Mardlin was convicted of arson and burning insured property after a fire burned his home in Capac, Michigan. At trial, a police officer and an investigator testified that the fire had been set intentionally, though no evidence of accelerants was found. Mardlin was exonerated in 2011 after a defense expert determined that the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction. Mardlin (back right) is pictured here with his family after his release.

George Allen, Jr.
State: MO
Date of Exoneration: 1/18/2013
George Allen, Jr. was convicted of rape and murder in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1983, based on a coerced false confession and forensic fraud. He was freed in 2013 after DNA testing excluded Allen as the source of semen left at the scene, and it was discovered lab reports that had been altered to hide the fact that biological evidence recovered did not match Allen's blood type.

Charles Wilhite
State: MA
Date of Exoneration: 1/17/2013
Charles Wilhite was convicted of murder in December 2010, based on false eyewitness identifications. He was exonerated in 2013 after a key witness recanted his testimony, saying he had lied in order to get out of jail and that prosecutors had pressured him to identify Wilhite. (Photo of Wilhite and daugher Iesha courtesy of The Springfield Republican.)

Bennie Starks
State: IL
Date of Exoneration: 1/7/2013
Bennie Starks was convicted in 1986 of a kidnapping and rape in Lake County, Illinois. He was released from prison in 2006 after DNA tests eliminated him as the rapist, but Lake County prosecutors continued to argue that he was guilty. Six years later, in 2012, a new State's Attorney was elected and dismissed the case in January 2013. (Photo courtesy of Innocence Project)

Seth Penalver
State: FL
Date of Exoneration: 12/21/2012
Seth Penalver was sentenced to death in Florida in 1999 for a triple murder after his first trial ended with a hung jury. No physical evidence linked him to the crime and two supposed eyewitnesses testified they could not identify him. His conviction was reversed and he was acquitted on December 21, 2012, when new evidence confirmed that police pressured witnesses to identify him and concealed a payment to one witness. (Photo Copyright by Cal Deal)

Kristine Bunch
State: IN
Date of Exoneration: 12/17/2012
Kristine Bunch was sentenced to 60 years in prison in 1996 for setting a fire that killed her three-year-old son. She was released in 2012 after new evidence showed that there was no scientific basis for the prosecution's claim that the fire was arson, that the condition of the victim's body was inconsistent with that theory, and that a report on the fire had been altered to show it was arson.

Cathy Watkins
State: NY
Date of Exoneration: 12/13/2012
Cathy Watkins (left), Eric Glisson, Devon Ayers, Michael Cosme and Carlos Perez  were sentenced to 25 years to life for the 1995 murder of a livery driver in the Bronx. In 2012, a federal investigation identified the real killers, two gang members who admitted their guilt. Watkins and Glisson were released on December 13. Ayers, Cosme and Perez remain in prison while they seek a new trial in a related case. (Photo courtesy of Diane Bladecki for Centurion Ministries)

Alfonso Gomez
State: CA
Date of Exoneration: 11/30/2012
In 1998, 21-year-old Alfonso Gomez was convicted of one count of murder and five counts of attempted murder after two witnesses said he fired shots at a passing car in Santa Ana, California. The prosecution dismissed the charges in 2012 after two other men were charged with these crimes, and one of them admitted he was present but said Gomez was not involved. (Copyrighted photograph courtesy Orange County Register).

James Grissom
State: MI
Date of Exoneration: 11/19/2012
In 2003, 44-year-old James Grissom was sentenced to 15 to 35 years in prison for raping a woman in Fort Gratiot, Michigan. The only evidence against him was the victim's testimony. The conviction was dismissed in 2012 after it was learned that the victim had concocted numerous other false accounts of being kidnapped and raped.

Selesa Likine
State: MI
Date of Exoneration: 11/14/2012
In 2008, Selesa Likine was convicted of failing to pay $40,000 in child support. She was placed on probation, and given credit for 48 days she had spent in jail before posting bond. In 2012, the Michigan Supreme Court reversed the conviction because Likine had been unfairly prevented from presenting evidence that she was unable to pay due to a debilitating illness.

Lana Canen
State: IN
Date of Exoneration: 11/2/2012
Lana Canen was convicted and sentenced to 55 years in prison for taking part in the 2002 murder of a 94-year-old woman in Elkhart, Indiana, solely on the basis of a single fingerprint found at the scene. After an independent expert excluded Canen, the prosecution's fingerprint analyst admitted he made a mistake and the case was dismissed. (Photo courtesy WSBT/Ted Land)

Drayton Witt
State: AZ
Date of Exoneration: 10/29/2012
In 2002, 18-year-old Drayton Witt was convicted of murder in Phoenix, Arizona, after experts testified he had shaken his girlfriend's baby to death. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was released  in 2012, after numerous medical experts said the baby died of natural causes not Shaken Baby Syndrome. Witt is pictured with the child's mother, now his wife, who supported him throughout his time in prison. (Photo courtesy of the Arizona Justice Project)

Lawrence Williams
State: NY
Date of Exoneration: 10/26/2012
Lawrence Williams was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2009 for shooting a New York man during an attempted robbery. The victim and one other witness identified Williams as the gunman. The Williams' family located the real gunman in prison where he confessed to the shooting and said Williams was not involved.

David Lee Wiggins
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 10/20/2012
David Lee Wiggins was sentenced to life in prison in 1989 for raping a 14-year-old girl in Fort Worth, Texas after the victim identified him as her attacker following a suggestive lineup. DNA tests conducted at the request of the Innocence Project and the Tarrant County District Attorney excluded Wiggins in 2012 and he was relesaed. (Photo courtesy Innocence Project)

Willie Grimes
State: NC
Date of Exoneration: 10/5/2012
In October 1988, Willie Grimes was convicted of raping a 69-year-old woman in Hickory, North Carolina and sentenced to life in prison, despite eight alibi witnesses. He sought DNA testing, but the evidence had been destroyed. In 2012, after fingerprints at the scene were linked to another man, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission declared him factually innocent and the Catawba County District Attorney apologized. (Copyrighted photograph courtesy Hickory Daily Record)

Damon Thibodeaux
State: LA
Date of Exoneration: 9/28/2012
Damon Thibodeaux was convicted and sentenced to death in 1997 for the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step-cousin. His conviction was based on a confession and two witnesses who said they saw him near where the body was found. Thibodeaux was exonerated by DNA tests as well as evidence that the confession was coerced, there was no rape, and the eyewitnesses were mistaken. (Photo courtesy of Calhoun McCormick.)

John Edward Smith
State: CA
Date of Exoneration: 9/24/2012
In 1994 John Edward Smith was sentenced to life in prison for a 1993 drive-by gang shooting in Los Angeles that killed one man and injured another, base entirely on the testimony of the surviving victim. That victim later admitted that he lied under pressure from police to identify Smith. Police also concealed evidence that another man was the likely shooter. On September 24, 2012, the trial court granted a joint motion by the prosecutor and Smith's lawyers to dismiss the charges.

Terrell Johnson
State: PA
Date of Exoneration: 9/12/2012
Terrell Johnson was convicted in 1995 of participating in the murder of a woman who was scheduled to testify against him. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Johnson was granted a new trial in 2008 after new evidence showed the witness who identified him was lying. He was acquitted by a jury in 2012. (Photograph courtesy of Darlene Natale.)

Noe Moreno
State: NC
Date of Exoneration: 8/31/2012
Noe Moreno pleaded guilty in 2007 to being the driver of a vehicle that caused a crash in Charlotte, North Carolina that killed a passenger. In 2010, a reconstruction of the crash by experts on behalf of Duke Law School's Wrongful Convictions Clinic found Moreno was a front seat passenger and his brother, Jorge, was the driver. A separate investigation by the Mecklenburg County District Attorney's Office concluded the same and the case was dismissed.

Alprentiss Nash
State: IL
Date of Exoneration: 8/30/2012
Alprentiss Nash was convicted in 1997 for the robbery and murder of a neighborhood bootlegger on Chicago's South Side. After serving more than 17 years in prison, he was released after DNA tests on a ski mask worn by the gunman excluded him and matched the DNA of another convicted felon.

Cory Credell
State: SC
Date of Exoneration: 8/20/2012
In 2001, Cory Credell was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for participating in an execution-murder in Orangeburg County, South Carolina. His conviction was overturned by a federal court because his trial attorney failed to call alibi witnesses who would have testified he was in New York at the time of the crime. A witness also admitted he had falsely identified Credell as taking part in the murder.

Michael Hash
State: VA
Date of Exoneration: 8/20/2012
In 2001, Michael Hash was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole for taking part in the murder of a 74-year-old woman in Lignum, Virginia when he was 15 years old. He was released after a co-defendant recanted a confession implicating Hash. Prosecutors were found to have concealed exculpatory evidence and allowed witnesses to lie.(Photo courtesy of Courteney Stuart of The Hook.)


Sedrick Courtney
State: OK
Date of Exoneration: 7/19/2012
In 1996, 23-year-old Sedrick Courtney was convicted and sentenced to 30 years for the armed robbery in Tulsa, Oklahoma after the victim identified him and a police crime lab analyst said a hair from a ski mask was similar to Courtney's hair. In 2012, DNA tests on more than a dozen hairs taken from two ski masks excluded Courtney. (Photo courtesy of the Innocence Project.)

Raymond Jackson
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 7/16/2012
Raymond Jackson (left) and James Williams were exonerated In Dallas after spending almost 30 years in prison for an aggravated sexual assault they did not commit. Multiple mistaken eyewitness identifications were a major factor in the convictions. [Photograph: Gordon Jackson, The Dallas Weekly]

Kirk Odom
State: DC
Date of Exoneration: 7/13/2012
Eighteen-year-old Kirk Odom was convicted in 1981 of raping and robbing a woman in Washington, D.C, after the victim identified him and an FBI agent gave misleading testimony that a hair found at the scene was "microscopically similar" to Odom's hair. Sentenced to 20 to 66 years in prison, Odom was paroled in 2003 and exonerated by DNA in 2012.

Andre Davis
State: IL
Date of Exoneration: 7/6/2012
In 1981, 19-year-old Andre Davis was convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a three-year-old girl in Rantoul, Illinois. A witness said Davis, while drunk, said he killed a woman in a house. When the witness went to the house, he found the girl's body. Davis was exonerated in 2012 after DNA tests excluded him and were linked to a man who lived in the house where the body was found.  [Photograph: Illinois Department of Corrections]

Frank O'Connell
State: CA
Date of Exoneration: 6/11/2012
In 1985, in Los Angeles County, California, Frank O'Connell was convicted of murder based on eyewitness testimony and an ambiguous dying declaration by the victim. He was exonerated in 2012 after the key eyewitness admitted he could never recognize the killer, and it was discovered that police hid evidence of other suspects and improperly influenced the identification procedure. [Photograph: Diane Bladecki]

David Lee Gavitt
State: MI
Date of Exoneration: 6/5/2012
In 1986, David Lee Gavitt was sentenced to life without parole for arson and murder, after barely escaping a home fire that killed his wife and two young daughters. On June 5, 2012, he was exonerated after new analysis of evidence from the fire found no proof that it was deliberately set. Experts concluded that the original investigators had relied on a mix of junk science and "arson myths," and that one investigator misread the results of the tests he performed.

James Kluppelberg
State: IL
Date of Exoneration: 5/30/2012
James Kluppelberg was sentenced to life in prison in 1990 for arson and murder for setting a fire that killed a woman and her five children in Chicago. On May 30, 2012, the case was dismissed because the arson evidence was discredited as unscientific and the witness who said Kluppelberg confessed admitted he had lied.

Brian Banks
State: CA
Date of Exoneration: 5/24/2012
In 2002 Brian Banks, age 17, pled guilty to rape of a high school classmate. On May 24, 2012, he was exonerated after the alleged victim admitted she made up the rape. Banks spent 5 years in prison. [Photograph: Heidi Cruise]

Bennett Barbour
State: VA
Date of Exoneration: 5/24/2012
In 1978, Bennett Barbour was convicted of rape in St. James County, Virginia based the eyewitness identification of the victim, a 25-year-old college student. After DNA testing was ordered on hundreds of old cases, test results excluded him as the rapist in 2010. Barbour, who was released from prison in 1982 after serving four and a half years, wasn't notified until 2012. The Virginia Supreme Court granted his petition for a writ of innocence.[Photograph courtesy of The Innocence Project of the University of Virgina School of Law]

Richard Miles
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 2/15/2012
Richard Miles was convicted of murder in Dallas in 1996 and  released in 2009 after it was discovered that prosecutors had hidden reports implicating other suspects. In 2010 the main prosecution witnesses recanted. On February 15, 2012, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals found him “actually innocent.” [Photograph: Diane Bladecki]

Vincent Thames
State: IL
Date of Exoneration: 1/17/2012
Vincent Thames, Terrill Swift, Harold Richardson, and Michael Saunders were exonerated in Chicago on November 16, 2011 after crime scene DNA was matched to another man. Judge Paul Biebel Jr., who vacated their convictions, quoted the trial judge who convicted them in 1998:  “If there is a DNA match, then we are talking about another case altogether.”

Juan Rivera
State: IL
Date of Exoneration: 1/6/2012
After his third conviction, the Illinois Appellate Court reversed the conviction, saying there was insufficient evidence. Prosecutors dropped the charges. Rivera was released on January 6, 2012 after spending almost 20 years in prison.

Michael Morton
State: TX
Date of Exoneration: 12/19/2011
On October 4, 2011, Michael Morton was freed, and he was later fully exonerated on December 19. Meanwhile, the State Bar of Texas is investigating the two prosecutors involved in his case for professional misconduct.