If you are not familiar with Kenny's case -- one of the most compelling cases of innocence we have seen -- please read the following:


Truth in Justice has followed Marty Tankleff's case for years.  His exoneration came suddenly, after decades of struggle.  The following reports give perspective to a saga that, at last, has a happy ending.

In 1988, Arlene Tankleff was slashed across the throat and bludgeoned to death, and her husband, Seymour, was mortally wounded in the middle of the night in their affluent Long Island home. Their son, Martin, 17, confessed, then recanted. But in 1990 he was convicted of their murders in a highly publicized trial that was featured on Court TV.  Ever since, he and the other surviving relatives have insisted that he did not kill his parents. Seymour Tankleff's brother, Norman, said that he never doubted the son's innocence. Mrs. Tankleff's sister, Marcella Falbee, said, "From the beginning, none of us ever believed he did this." Now Martin Tankleff's supporters claim to have new evidence, obtained by a former New York City homicide detective, that they say points to the real culprits.  Pushing to Clear His Name


Three times during his nearly 27 years in prison, Charles Chatman went before a parole board and refused to tell them what they wanted to hear: that he had raped a woman in his Dallas, TX neighborhood.  Chatman always maintained his innocence, and on January 3, 2008 a judge affirmed it. Chatman, 47, won his freedom after new DNA testing excluded him as the rapist, adding to Dallas County's nationally unmatched number of wrongfully convicted inmates.

Rickey Johnson of Leesville, LA spent 25 years in prison for a rape he did not commit.  His 2007 Christmas gift was being excluded by DNA, leading to his release.  How will he cope with a strange new world?  "I'll just take one day at a time. That's the way I learned it in prison; one day at a time. Wherever the Lord leads me, that's where I'll be."


We have followed the cases of Randy Steidl and Herb Whitlock for years, too.  First Randy was exonerated and freed.  Now Herb has been freed -- but the state continues to deny that he is innocent of the Rhoads' murders.



Tim Masters of Fort Collins, CO is yet another inmate who struggled for years to prove his innocence.  Cracks began to appear in the wall of psychobabble on which Masters' conviction was built in July of 2007.  The entire fabrication fell six months later.

Somewhere between the spot Peggy Hettrick was abducted and the Fort Collins, Colorado field where her partially clad body was dumped, her killer would have shed pieces of himself, mothlike. As he pulled her through the grass that dark morning on Feb. 11, 1987, his skin cells could have sloughed off onto her black coat. A strand of his hair could have hooked onto her shoes. A sneeze could have dampened her blouse. This is the law of forensic science: When two people come into contact, they leave cells on each other. But in the Hettrick murder case, authorities strayed from this law by losing some of these biological relics and destroying evidence linked to a prominent doctor they never investigated for the crime. In doing so, they may have covered the killer's genetic tracks.  This happened in Fort Collins, where a detective clung to his belief that a 15-year-old boy committed the crime, despite no physical evidence. In a county where prosecutors opposed saving DNA, let alone testing it. In a state where the law doesn't create a duty to preserve forensic evidence.  The result:  An innocent man, Tim Masters, goes to prison for life, and the real killer moves on.

UPDATE:  January 3, 2008:  Innocence Bid Gets Boost.  Fort Collins, CO authorities violated evidence-discovery rules when they withheld expert opinions that conflicted with their theory that a 15-year-old Tim Masters murdered Peggy Hettrick in 1987, according to special prosecutors.

UPDATE:  January 22, 2008:  Tim Masters released and his conviction vacated.  DNA excludes Masters and points to another suspect.

David Scott, 39, of Terre Haute, IN, had been serving a 50-year prison sentence for the 1984 murder of Loretta Keith, who was bludgeoned to death in her bed with a hydraulic jack. Authorities said that DNA testing not available in 1984 — including analysis of blood found on a nylon stocking at Keith’s home — cleared Scott.  Prosecutors said the DNA test results showed that Kevin Mark Weeks, 44, of LaGrange, Ky., was the person who killed Keith.

“This all happened so fast,” said Vigo County Prosecutor Terry Modesitt, who filed a joint petition with Scott for his release.  Not really.  Four months after Scott was convicted, Scott's public defender, Larry Wagner, presented evidence from Weeks' accomplice that Weeks killed Ms. Keith, and that Scott had nothing to do with it.  The Indiana courts, all the way up to and including the state supreme court, rejected the evidence, but the PD Investigator Always Knew Scott was Innocent.

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