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

Philadelphia District Attorney Creates Conviction Integrity Unit
4/16/2014

​Newly-elected Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams has created a Conviction Integrity Unit to investigate claims of innocence from defendants who contend they were wrongly convicted. The unit is part of a growing trend by prosecutors to respond to innocence claims, and to help prevent false convictions in the future. Similar units have been established in numerous jurisdictions, including Dallas County, Texas; Santa Clara County, California; Baltimore City, Maryland; Cook County, Illinois; Manhattan and Brooklyn. The Philadelphia unit will receive innocence cases from the Pennsylvania Innocence Project at Temple Law School.

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We currently list more than 1,340 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
Jonathan Fleming
State: NY
Date of Exoneration: 4/8/2014
Jonathan Fleming was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for a 1989 murder in Brooklyn despite evidence he was in Florida at the time. He was exonerated in 2014 after the only eyewitness recanted, another witness identified the real killer, and it was discovered that authorities had concealed a receipt showing he paid a hotel bill in Orlando hours before the shooting in New York. (AP photo by Seth Wenig)

Randall Mills
State: TN
Date of Exoneration: 4/4/2014
In 2000, Randall Mills was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl in Marshall County, Tennessee, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He was exonerated in 2014 after DNA tests on semen found on the victim's clothing excluded him and identified the DNA profiles of two other men.

Walter Lomax
State: MD
Date of Exoneration: 4/2/2014
In 1968, Walter Lomax was sentenced to life in prison for robbery and murder in Baltimore, Maryland. In 2006, his sentence was reduced and he was released after 38 years in prison. In 2014, Lomax was exonerated when the Baltimore State's Attorney's Conviction Integrity Unit discovered that evidence from the original investigation that had been concealed for decades showed that Lomax could not have been the murderer.

William Lopez
State: NY
Date of Exoneration: 3/28/2014
William Lopez was convicted of a 1989 murder in Brooklyn, New York, and sentenced to 25 years to life. In 2013, a federal judge overturned the conviction based on prosecutorial misconduct, the recantation by a supposed eyewitness and testimony by a newly discovered witness that Lopez was not involved. (Photograph of Lopez and his brother, Eugene (left) by New York Daily News)