wrongful conviction
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NYC Man Exonerated After Serving 30 Years for Rape He Didn’t Commit
Thirty years ago, three men broke into a Brooklyn, N.Y., Burger King, robbing the store and gang-raping an 18-year-old worker who had been closing up the eatery. But the brutal attack—and the subsequent police investigation—landed four men behind bars. The fourth was a then-17-year-old named Mark Denny, whom the 18-year-old identified in a police lineup.…
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Jury Awards Man $15 Million for Spending 20 Years in Prison for a Crime He Didn’t Commit
A federal jury awarded a Baltimore man $15 million after he spent more than two decades wrongly incarcerated for murder. Sabein Burgess sued the Baltimore Police Department and two detectives for his wrongful conviction for the 1994 murder of his then-girlfriend Michelle Dyson, according to the Baltimore Sun. Burgess was released from prison in 2015…
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Black Man in Louisiana to Be Freed From Prison After Judge Overturned 1974 Conviction, but He Still Has to Pay $2,000 Bail
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2017, 5:35 p.m. EST: Many of you have asked how you can help Wilbert Jones. This fundraising page, which the Innocence Project New Orleans sent us, has been set up to help Jones “rebuild his life after 45 years of wrongful incarceration.” Earlier: Wilbert Jones was 19 years old when police…
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Detroit Man Wrongly Imprisoned for 25 Years, Claims in New Lawsuit That Police Deliberately Set Him Up to Take the Fall
Doctored evidence caused one Detroit man to serve 25 years in prison for a murder. Now that man, 51-year-old Desmond Ricks, is filing a lawsuit seeking more than $100 million, claiming that officers deliberately framed him by switching out bullets to convict him. According to the Associated Press, Ricks was released from prison in May…
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Crown Heights Exposes a Very Common American Problem: Wrongful Conviction
The time is 1980. The place is the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn in New York City. The man is 18-year-old Colin Warner. It’s a familiar scenario. An unarmed black man is walking through his own neighborhood, minding his business, when, within the blink of an eye, his whole life changes. Police officers pull up,…
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Detroit Man, Convicted Based on a Single Hair, Released After 41 Years in Prison
Ledura Watkins has spent his entire adult life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. On Thursday, after some 41 years behind bars, Watkins, now 61, walked out of Michigan’s Wayne County Jail after his conviction was overturned. According to the Washington Post, Watkins was freed after prosecutors agreed that his murder conviction in…
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Prosecutors Drop All Charges Against Detroit Man Who Spent 25 Years in Prison in Murder Case
All charges against a Detroit man were dropped Thursday after he spent some 25 years in prison. According to the Associated Press, Desmond Ricks long accused police of pinning a murder on him by seizing his mother’s gun and switching bullets in the case. An analysis of two bullets from the victim showed that they…
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Innocent Philly Man Freed After Spending 24 Years in Prison
Twenty-four years ago, Shaurn Thomas was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, but on Tuesday, he walked out of the State Correctional Institution in Frackville, Pa., an innocent man. In 1990, Thomas was tried and convicted of the murder of Domingo Martinez, who was shot and killed while trying to cash a…
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Fla. Apologizes to ‘Groveland Four,’ Men Wrongly Convicted of Rape in 1949
In 1949 in Groveland, Fla., four men—Walter Irvin, Samuel Shepherd, Charles Greenlee and Ernest Thomas—were wrongly convicted of raping 17-year-old Norma Padgett in Groveland. Three of the men were imprisoned and another was shot and killed by a group of white men. They became known as the Groveland Four. On Wednesday, Florida lawmakers voted unanimously…
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Innocent Man in Los Angeles Freed After Serving 20 Years for Attempted Murder
File this under “Our messed-up justice system just righted an incredible wrong”: A man who spent 20 years behind bars for a gas station shooting he didn’t commit was freed Tuesday by a Los Angeles County judge. Marco Contreras, 41, was convicted in 1997 of attempted robbery and attempted murder for a 1996 shooting at…