Conviction review
Convictions that were overturned, and innocence claims courts are ruling on this week. Read what the evidence was and where it broke.
Manuel Salazar
Manuel Salazar (born February 20, 1966) was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the shooting of a police officer in 1984. Initially convicted of murder and sentenced to death, he became known as an artist for paintings he created while on death row. Salazar's murder conviction was overturned in 1994; on retrial, Salazar was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, and released from prison in 1996.
1992 · New YorkOverturned
Fernando Bermudez
Fernando Bermudez (born February 13, 1969) is a New York City resident who was exonerated in 2009 after being convicted in 1992 of the second-degree murder of a 16-year-old boy in New York City's Greenwich Village. He was sentenced to 23 years to life. In 2009, his conviction was overturned on appeal by a New York County Supreme Court justice who also ordered Bermudez released, and dismissed the charges with…
1998Overturned
Clarence Elkins
Clarence Arnold Elkins Sr. (born January 19, 1963) is an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of his mother-in-law, Judith Johnson, and the rape and assault of his wife's niece, Brooke Sutton. He was convicted solely on the basis of the testimony of six-year-old Brooke, who testified that Elkins was the perpetrator.
1974 · LouisianaOverturnedGregory Bright
Gregory Bright (born 1954) is an American man from New Orleans, who was convicted of second degree murder in 1974 at the age of 20. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, served at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. After several years of appeals, Bright was granted a new trial in 2001 on the grounds that the prosecution had withheld evidence from the defense in his previous trial.
1980 · TexasOverturnedCornelius Dupree
Cornelius Dupree Jr. (born September 22, 1959) is an American man who was declared innocent of a 1980 conviction for aggravated robbery, which was alleged to have been committed during a rape in 1979. He was paroled in July 2010 after serving 30 years of a 75-year prison sentence in Texas.
1993OverturnedGary Gauger
Gary Gauger (born January 21, 1952) is a formerly imprisoned convict, who was falsely accused and convicted of the murders of his parents, Morris and Ruth Gauger, and later exonerated. Following the murder on April 8, 1993, Gauger ultimately spent nearly two years in prison and 9 months on death row before being released in March 1996.
2009OverturnedBernard Baran
Bernard F. Baran Jr. (May 25, 1965 – September 1, 2014) was an American day care worker wrongfully convicted in the day care sex-abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s. Baran's case spanned almost 25 years from his arrest at the age of nineteen until 2009 when all charges were finally dropped.
1981 · OhioOverturnedRaymond Towler
Ray Towler (born Raymond Towler June 16, 1957) is an American musician (guitarist, keyboardist and trumpeter) and artist (painter). On September 18, 1981, when he was 24, Towler was falsely convicted of rape, kidnapping and felonious assault in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The charges were vacated on May 5, 2010 after Towler had spent over 29 years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.
1984 · WashingtonOverturnedEarl Washington Jr.
Earl Washington Jr. (born May 3, 1960) is a former Virginia death row inmate, who was fully exonerated of murder charges against him in 2000. He had been convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the 1982 rape and murder of Rebecca Lyn Williams in Culpeper, Virginia.
1996 · MississippiOverturned
Curtis Flowers
Curtis Giovanni Flowers (May 29, 1970 – October 7, 2026) was an American man who was wrongly imprisoned and on death row for more than twenty-two years, during which he was tried for the same murders six separate times by the same prosecutor in the U.S. state of Mississippi. Four of these trials had resulted in convictions, all of which were overturned on appeal for repeated prosecutorial misconduct. Flowers was…
Year unknownOverturnedWrongful conviction of Steve Titus
The wrongful conviction of Steve Titus was a miscarriage of justice in which Steve Gary Titus (1949–1985), an American businessman, was convicted wrongly of rape. Titus was dismissed from his job after the conviction and, though the charges were soon dismissed, he became long term unemployed. The crime was later determined to have been committed by serial rapist Edward Lee King.
1983 · IllinoisOverturnedRolando Cruz case
Rolando Cruz (born 1963) is an American man known for having been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, along with co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez, for the 1983 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County, Illinois. Cruz and Hernandez both became suspects after making detailed reports to the police, which they later claimed to be false, about the murder. Their first trial…
Year unknownOverturnedDeWayne McKinney
DeWayne McKinney (c. 1966 – October 7, 2008) was an ATM entrepreneur and wrongfully convicted and imprisoned American man.
Year unknownOverturnedLevon Jones
Levon "Bo" Jones (born September 10, 1958) is an American former death row inmate.
1981OverturnedCharles Chatman
Charles Chatman (born 1961) served 27 years in prison due to a wrongful conviction. He had been convicted in 1981 at the age of 20 of aggravated rape and sentenced to life in prison. He was released on 3 January 2008.
2007 · New YorkOverturnedLynn DeJac
Lynn DeJac Peters (November 20, 1963 – June 18, 2014) was an American woman from Buffalo, New York, who spent 13 years in prison for the murder of her daughter before her conviction was vacated in 2007, making her the first woman to be exonerated of murder on the basis of DNA evidence. She successfully sued the state of New York for wrongful conviction.
1985 · IllinoisOverturnedMurder of Jeanine Nicarico
The Jeanine Nicarico murder case was a complex and influential homicide investigation and prosecution in which two men, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez, were wrongfully convicted of abduction, rape and murder in 1985 in DuPage County, Illinois. They were both sentenced to death. The case was scrutinized during appeals for being weak in evidence.
1988 · IllinoisOverturnedJoseph Burrows
Joseph H. Burrows (October 5, 1953 – October 15, 2009) was an American man who was wrongfully convicted of the murder of farmer William E. Dulan at his home in Iroquois County, Illinois, in 1988. After his conviction and sentence to death in 1989, Burrows was held for nearly five years on death row. Peter Rooney, a reporter for the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, obtained a recantation from a key witness against…
1997OverturnedNorfolk Four
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of 18-year-old Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions were considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard,…
2006 · WisconsinOverturnedGeorgia Thompson
Georgia L. Thompson (born c. 1950) is a Wisconsin civil servant who was wrongfully convicted of federal corruption charges in 2006, then exonerated by an appeals court in 2007. Thompson is a Madison native, and graduated from Madison East High School in 1968.
1971 · North CarolinaOverturned
Wilmington Ten
The Wilmington Ten were nine young men and a woman who were wrongfully convicted in 1971 in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, of arson and conspiracy. Most were sentenced to 29 years in prison, and all ten served nearly a decade in jail before an appeal won their release. The case became an international cause célèbre, in which many critics of the city and state characterized the activists as political…
1996 · LouisianaOverturnedShareef Cousin
Shareef Cousin (born 1979) is an African-American man from New Orleans who was convicted of the first-degree murder of Michael Gerardi in 1996 and sentenced to death as a juvenile in Louisiana. At age 17, he became the youngest condemned convict to be sent to death row in Louisiana, and one of the youngest in the United States. Cousin was convicted of Gerardi's murder on the basis of three eyewitnesses.
1996 · IndianaOverturnedRichard Alexander
Richard Alexander (born December 1966) is an Indiana man who was wrongfully convicted of a 1996 rape and exonerated in 2001 by DNA evidence. Years later, on September 17, 2020, Alexander was charged with the murder of Catherine Minix, who was found stabbed to death. Minix had previously filed a protective order against Alexander for domestic violence.
1986 · OregonOverturnedSantiago Ventura Morales
Santiago Ventura Morales (born 1968) is a Mexican social worker in the state of Oregon. Born in Mexico, he was falsely convicted of murder in Oregon in 1986. The conviction drew national attention when some jurors worked to overturn the conviction, and he was released from prison in 1991.