Chicago Tribune

2 min read

CHICAGO - An attorney representing a man who spent 23 years locked up for a murder he didn't commit says her client was turned away twice by Chase Bank when he tried to deposit a check from the state of Illinois to compensate him for his time impriso

New Idea

2 min read

She may hail from Scotland, but no-one can argue Dr Xanthé Mallett is a true-blue champion of the Aussie people. An internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and criminologist, Xanthé has seen so many miscarriages of justice in the legal syst

The Marshall Project

4 min read

Jennifer Thompson has told her harrowing tale many times. In 1984, a man broke into her apartment and sexually assaulted her at knifepoint. She picked Ronald Cotton out of a police lineup, and he was sent to prison. But a decade later he was proven i

The Marshall Project

4 min read

Jabbar Collins languished in jail for over 16 years for a murder he apparently never committed. He was only freed a few years ago when it was revealed at a post-conviction hearing that the main witness at his trial had told the prosecutor that he was

WHO

2 min read

Waking up on his 19th birthday on February 9, 1963, John Button didn’t think life could get any better. He had a gorgeous girlfriend, Rosemary Anderson, 17, whom he was planning to propose to on her 18th birthday, his own car and a job as a brickie’s

The Guardian

6 min read

He had spent 43 years in prison, and a spell on death row, for a murder he did not commit. In 2019 Charles Ray Finch, an African American man from North Carolina now in his 80s, was finally set free. “He went in at age 40, the prime of his life, and

The Atlantic

8 min read

If you want to believe that Roger Coleman was the man who raped and murdered 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, his sister-in-law, on the night of March 10, 1981, in her small home in the coal-mining town of Longbottom, Virginia, you have to accept that Colema

Reason

3 min read

WHEN THREE TAMPA, Florida, police officers were fired for misconduct earlier this year, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren put his newly created “conviction review unit” to work. The members pored over 225 closed cases that the officers

The Atlantic

5 min read

In Philadelphia and other cities, prosecutors have formed “conviction review units”—special teams that reinvestigate cases they may have gotten wrong.  

Los Angeles Times

2 min read

The American criminal justice system has never been as good about ferreting out truth and justice as most people would like to think. The system relies on the memories and judgments of human beings, which makes it fallible and, worse, subject to mani

TV Guide Magazine

2 min read

DOCUSERIES PREMIERE WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15 Netflix’s latest true-crime series is sure to make you question everything you think you know about America’s criminal justice system. The Innocence Files delves into cases of wrongful conviction, exploring the

NPR

2 min read

Benjamin Rachlin's crisply-written new book tells the story of Willie Grimes, who spent 24 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit — and the tortuous legal struggle that eventually freed him.

You South Africa

2 min read

Lucy lost her mom when she was young so when she marries Ollie she’s looking forward to having a close relationship with her new family. She immediately connects with her father-in-law, Tom, and sister-in-law, Nettie. But her mother-in-law, Diana, wh

All About History

1 min read

During her lifetime Frances Glessner Lee had become well-known in the field of forensics and criminal investigation. And it was the Nutshells and famous seminars that brought her to the attention of one of the world’s most widely read authors, Erle S

WHO

2 min read

On November 30, almost 40 years after her testimony helped put an innocent man in prison for a vicious and callous crime he didn’t commit, acclaimed author Alice Sebold publicly apologised to Anthony Broadwater for wrongly accusing him of her rape.

The Marshall Project

2 min read

Jon Eldan spends his days in his kitchen in Oakland, California, cold-calling, emailing and combing public records searching for exonerees whose lives he can change by helping them file for a special tax refund that most have no idea exists. In some

Who Do You Think You Are?

1 min read

BBC One’s award-winning Murder, Mystery and My Family is returning for a new series. Has a member of your family been convicted of murder before 1975? Do you believe there may have been a miscarriage of justice? If so, please email familymystery@chal

Chicago Tribune

3 min read

CHICAGO - In the two decades since Ricardo Rodriguez was convicted of murder, he has maintained his innocence. This week, the Cook County state's attorney agreed to drop the case against him amid allegations that a discredited police detective manipu

Hemmings Motor News

1 min read

This particular ad series, assembled from cast members of the Perry Mason television series, might have eluded fans unless they were astute enough to tear themselves away from the tube in 1958 long enough to peruse a proper print magazine. The Libby-

This Week in Asia

5 min read

For five days in August 2013, the trial of Bo Xilai, once a rising political star slated for China's top leadership, gripped the nation and made headlines around the world, and not just for its political intrigue, bribery and murder. More importantly

The Marshall Project

3 min read

A veteran Queens lawyer nicknamed "Mighty Whitey" drummed up a mighty sinister scheme to subvert the criminal justice system and make millions in the process, authorities allege. Scott Brettschneider plotted to pay a murder witness to recant his tria

The Christian Science Monitor

11 min read

They served time for crimes they didn’t commit and run a nonprofit that investigates cases for other wrongly convicted prisoners.

People Magazine South Africa

2 min read

ON October 25, 1972, Richard Phillips, 27, was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison with no possibility of parole. Phillips and Richard Palombo had been convicted of the first-degree murder of Gregory Harris. Harris had been abducted fro

The Atlantic

8 min read

What Richard Miles experienced at the hands of the police was not captured on cellphone video, did not involve a dramatic altercation with seven bullets to the back or a knee on the neck. His experience was slow, almost invisible, but still devastati

NPR

2 min read

Based on former federal prosecutor Mark Godsey's book of the same title, the new opera Blind Injustice draws on detailed interviews with exonerees to put America's criminal justice system on trial.

NPR

2 min read

The pardon allows Dontae Sharpe to apply for compensation for his wrongful conviction for first-degree murder. A witness against him said her claims were made up, based on what investigators told her.

Los Angeles Times

1 min read

California Gov. Jerry Brown on Wednesday pardoned a 70-year-old man who spent nearly four decades behind bars for two murders that officials now believe he did not commit. Craig Coley was convicted in 1980 of strangling to death his ex-girlfriend and

The American Scholar

2 min read

I MAKE NO GREAT CLAIMS as a prognosticator, but I do feel certain that, unless manmade or natural disasters return us as a race to a state of prehistory, moral progress will soon stop us from doing two things. One is eating our fellow creatures and t

MoneyWeek

1 min read

The Court of Appeal last week reversed “one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history” by quashing the convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting of dozens of Post Office workers, says Haroon Siddique and Ben Quinn in The

Los Angeles Times

4 min read

NOTE: John Grisham is a writer best known for his popular legal thrillers. This piece was adapted from the foreword of "The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist." ___ It is too easy to convict an innocent person. The rate of wrongful convictions in t