Online Newsletter

Wilton Dedge

This Sharpes, FL case was a classic -- mistaken victim identification and perjured snitch testimony put Wilton in prison for a 1981 rape. He has been exonerated by DNA, and freed after 22 years.

Robert Louis Armstrong
When a jailhouse snitch seeking a deal on charges against her accused Robert Louis Armstrong of a 1998 triple murder, Armstrong met willingly with Maricopa County investigators. He knew he had been in Oregon when the murders occurred. A cop put a clip on Armstrong's shirt that he said was a "sensitivity test" and declared Armstrong was lying. Armstrong was charged with 3 counts of capital murder. A determined Public Defender Investigator found Armstrong's bus ticket and the bogus case began to unravel.

Ken Marsh
Ken Marsh spent 21 years in California prisons for a crime that never happened. He was convicted in 1984 of murdering 2-year-old Kenneth Buell based on testimony of treating physicians -- with no independent corroboration -- who were seeking to protect themselves from malpractice claims. His conviction was reversed without an evidentiary hearing based on insufficiency of the medical expert evidence.

Robert Carroll Coney
Robert Carroll Coney was in prison when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. He was in prison when the Beatles came to America, when men walked on the moon, when the war raged in Vietnam, when Communism fell, and when the Internet and cellphones were invented. But after spending almost every day of the last 42 years behind bars, Mr. Coney, 76, walked out of the Angelina County jail in Lufkin. A state district judge had found credence in Mr. Coney's longstanding claims that he had been beaten into pleading guilty, without a lawyer, to a $2,000 Safeway supermarket robbery that landed him a life sentence in 1962. The judge further found a long-forgotten court order should have expunged those criminal charges as far back as 1973.

Harold Hall
At the age of 18, following a grueling 17-hour interrogation, Harold Hall of Los Angeles, CA confessed to murdering two people. His conviction was sealed with the fabricated testimony of professional "snitches". It took 19 years, but Hall has finally been exonerated and released. The real killer remains unknown and, presumably, at large, thanks to the quick-and-dirty work of LAPD.

Arthur Lee Whitfield
Arthur Lee Whitfield spent part of his first hours of freedom standing up on the bus that carried him home. Whitfield was released from prison after DNA tests exonerated him of raping two women in Ghent, VA in August 1981. He had served 22 years of a 63-year sentence. Whitfield had little to say to the investigator who helped convict him, or to the two women who at trial said they were sure he was the man who had raped them. “It would be nice for them to say they made a mistake,” he said. “It takes a big person to say they made a mistake.”

Clarence Harrison
Clarence Harrison of Decatur, GA, has spent 17 years in prison for rape, kidnapping and robbery. The victim identified him from both a photo and live lineup. He has become the 150th person proven innocent by DNA in the past ten years.

OTHER EXONERATIONS/RELEASES OF NOTE

Lawrence Lloyd - Northland, New Zealand
Ever wonder if it's different in other parts of the world with legal systems that share the same origins as that in the US? It's not. When Kathy Sheffield was murdered in 1994, Lawrence knew he didn't do it, but he couldn't remember what happened, so he confessed. He served 7 years in prison. Now it turns out he's innocent.

Kenneth MacAlister
In 1986, a masked man attempted to rape a young mother in Richmond, VA. She was the first victim. Kenneth McAlister looked a lot like the would-be rapist. He was the second victim. McAlister served 18 years in prison for a crime in which he had no part. He was denied parole and pardon even though the detective who arrested him and the prosecutor who charged him went to bat for him, admitted their mistake and said they believe he is innocent. He was released on mandatory parole.

Neil Miller
During the 10 years he spent in prison for a rape he did not commit, Neil Miller of Boston, MA often thought about the man who should have been behind bars. DNA exonerated Miller in 2000. The same DNA has identified the real rapist, Lawrence Taylor.

WRONGFULLY CONVICTED COP -- EXONERATED

Kenneth Conley
On Jan. 25, 1995, Kenneth Conley was a young patrol officer from South Boston, MA dispatched to a shooting and foot chase. Pursuing one of the shooting suspects on foot, Conley was so focused on his prey that he didn't see other Boston police officers beating an undercover officer. When he testified to what he saw -- and didn't see -- the U.S. Attorney charged Conley with perjury. His conviction was overturned twice after it was learned Asst. U.S. Attorney Theodore Merritt withheld from the defense evidence that his star witness actually couldn't remember where Conley was in relation to the location where the undercover officer was beaten.

INNOCENT IMPRISONED

Lawrence Napper

The only evidence that tied Lawrence Napper to the 2001 kidnapping and molestation of a 6-year-old boy was DNA. Turns out it wasn't his DNA. Just another mistake by Houston Police Department's crime lab. Of course, Lawrence is still in prison.