Ntl Registry Exonerations Report Update April 2013

Ntl Registry Exonerations Report Update April 2013

• Topics: Sentencing, Wrongful Conviction

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UPDATE: 2012
The National Registry of Exonerations
April 3, 2013
The National Registry of Exonerations was launched on May 21, 2012, as a joint
project of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful
Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. At that time the Registry
listed 891 cases.
Ten months later the Registry now includes 1089 exonerations, an increase of
198 or 22%.
When the Registry was launched we released a report, Exonerations in the
United States, 1989-2012 (the Exoneration Report) that described the 873
exonerations that we had identified and coded by the end of February 2012. That
report also included a description of 12 “group exonerations” – sets of cases in
which corrupt police officers systematically framed innocent defendants for nonexistent crimes, mostly possession of illegal drugs or guns. Those group
exonerations included at least 1100 additional exonerated criminal defendants
who are not listed in the Registry itself.
In this 2012 Update we describe the status of the Registry at the end of 2012 and
identify continuing trends and new developments since the Registry was
launched. In final section, we describe several recently-added exonerations that
exemplify some of our findings.

Page 1 of 39

UPDATE: 2012
The National Registry of Exonerations
I.

WHAT’S NEW?
1. New Cases Added
We added 178 exoneration to the Registry in the ten months from March 1 through the
end of last year, and removed one case which we determined did not qualify as an
exoneration by our criteria.
With these additions the Registry listed 1050 exonerations on December 31, 2012.
The 178 exonerations we added from March through December 2012 are divided into
two unequal groups:


New exonerations. Nearly a third of the exonerations we added (58/178) took place
in 2012.
o These 58 cases raised the total number of known 2012 exonerations to 63,
second only to 2009 when there were 75 known exonerations, as of the end of
2012. (We have continued to add cases since; our current totals are 67 for
2012 and 76 for 2009.)



Old exonerations. About two-thirds of the cases we added (120/178) – occurred in
earlier years but were not previously identified.
o We added 14 exonerations from 2011, an increase of 39% over the 36
exonerations we previously knew about in 2011. The remaining 106 were
spread out reasonably evenly from 1989 to 2010, a 13% increase in known
exonerations for that entire period.

This rapid increase confirms our claim in the Exoneration Report that the exonerations
we now know about are only a fraction of all exonerations that have occurred.
2. What’s Changed and What Hasn’t


In 2012 there was a dramatic increase in the number and the proportion of
exonerations that prosecutors or police participated in obtaining.
o Of the 63 exonerations in 2012, prosecutors or police initiated or cooperated
in 34, or 54%.
o Over the past 24 years, prosecutors and police have cooperated in 30% of the
exonerations we know about (317/1050). Last year for the first time they

Page 2 of 39

cooperated in a majority of exonerations, and the number of such cases is a
large increase from the previous high (22 of 57 in 2008, or 39%).
o This increase may be due to a confluence of related factors: changes in state
laws that facilitate post-conviction DNA testing, the emergence of Conviction
Integrity Units in several large prosecutorial offices, and, perhaps, a change in
how law enforcement officers view the possibility of false convictions at trial.


In other respects the new exonerations that occurred in 2012 are generally
similar to the exonerations discussed in our previous report.
o They are overwhelmingly homicide cases (57%, 36/63) – including two
exonerations of defendants who had been sentenced to death – and sexual
assault cases (24%, 15/63); 30% involved DNA; 8% of the exonerees were
women (5/63); 57% were African American (36/63).



Overall trends:
o Official cooperation is least common among exonerations for highly
aggravated and publicized crimes – murders with death sentences and mass
child sex abuse prosecutions – and most common among exonerations for
robberies and drug crimes.
o The number of exonerations in cases in which the defendant pled guilty has
increased across these two reports from 8% (71/873) to over 9% (99/1050).
o The proportion of rape and murder exonerations is dropping. Most known
exonerations still involve homicide or sexual assault or both, but that
proportion is down from 83% on March 1 to 80% on December 31, 2012. It
was 96% in the best available study in 2004.
o The proportion of DNA cases continues to decline, from 35% in the previous
report to 33%. The rate of DNA exonerations has leveled off below its peak
while the number of other known exonerations, old and new, continues to
climb.
o The number of known exonerations in cases where no crime occurred also
increased, from 15% (129/873) to 19% (195/1050).



These trends reflect sharp changes among the old exonerations we have added,
which account for the noticeable shifts we see in a short period of time:
o 16% of the old exonerations added were cases in which the defendant pled
guilty.
o 38% of the old exonerations we added did not include sexual assault or
homicide, compared to 17% in the Exoneration Report.

Page 3 of 39

o In 37% of the old cases added, no crime occurred, compared to 15% in the
Exoneration Report.
o None of the old exonerations we added to the list involved DNA
These trends are related. The exonerations they concern – those without DNA, where
the defendant pled guilty, where no victim was killed or raped, or no crime actually
occurred – appear to be less publicized and less well-known than the archetypal
exoneration we have all seen and read about repeatedly: a defendant is sentenced to
death or life imprisonment after a trial for a rape-murder, and is exonerated decades
later by DNA.
Our work over the past year suggests that there are many of these less dramatic
exonerations that have escaped notice. We expect to find more of them in the years to
come.


There has been a recent increase in exonerations in cases in which the defendant
pled guilty.
The older guilty plea cases we have added are disproportionately exonerations that
occurred in the past few years. There have been 39 guilty-plea exonerations in the last
4 years – an average of 10 a year (and more per year than in any previous year), up
from an average of 3 a year from 1989 through 2008. Through 2008, guilty-plea
cases made up 7.5% of known exonerations; since 2009 they are 15.5%
This may reflect greater willingness by authorities to reconsider the guilt of innocent
defendants who accepted plea bargains rather than risk higher penalties at trial.



The case we added are unevenly distributed by state. That pattern does not reflect
the frequency of exonerations across those states. Since the release of the Exoneration
Report, we focused on finding cases in California, the most populous state in the
union, with a comparatively low rate of known exonerations per capita – and as a
result we added more exonerations in California than any other state:
CA – 39
TX -29
NY – 17
Federal – 13
IL – 12

FL – 6
MI – 6
WI – 6
PA - 5
IA – 4

LA – 4
MA -4
IN – 3
All Others – 30

As we turn our attention elsewhere, we expect to find more previously unknown
exonerations in other states.

Page 4 of 39

II.

SUMMARY: KNOWN EXONERATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE END OF 2012
1. Who’s Exonerated, and by What Procedure

Of the 1050 individual exonerations from January 1989 through December 2012:










93.2% were men (979/1050) and 6.7% were women (71/1050).1
We know the race of the defendants in 97.6% of the cases (1025/1050):
o 47.3% were black (485/1025),
o 38.5% were white (395/1025),
o 12.2% were Hispanic (126/1025), and
o 1.8% were Native American or Asian (19/1025).
9.4% pled guilty (99/1050) and the rest were convicted at trial, 82.2% by juries
(864/1050) and 7% by judges (73/1050). In 1.2% (13/1050), we don’t know whether
the trial conviction was by a jury or judge.
32.4% were cleared at least in part with the help of DNA evidence (341/1050).
67.5% were cleared without DNA evidence (709/1050).
Almost all had been in prison for years; half for at least 9 years; more than 75% for at
least 4 years.
As a group, the defendants had spent nearly 11,000 years in prison for crimes for
which they should not have been convicted – an average of more than 10 years each.2

As a procedural matter, these exonerations occurred in several ways; in some cases, in more than
one way:
Pardons: In 104 cases, governors (or in some states, other government officers or
bodies) issued pardons based on evidence of the defendants’ innocence, including 41
cases of defendants whose charges had previously been dismissed, and three who had
been acquitted on retrial by a jury or a judge.3
Dismissals: In 828 cases, criminal charges were dismissed by courts, generally on
motion by the prosecution, after new evidence of innocence emerged (not counting those
in which the defendant was later pardoned).
1

Because of this lopsided distribution, we generally refer to exonerated defendants using male pronouns.

This is a conservative estimate of the direct consequences of these wrongful convictions. We have not counted
time spent in custody before conviction. Nor have we included time spent on probation or parole, or time on bail or
other forms of supervised release pending trial, retrial, or dismissal, even though all of these conditions involve
restrictions on liberty – some mild, some onerous.
3

Under the Texas Wrongful Imprisonment Act (the “Tim Cole Act”), for example, an exonerated defendant may
need a pardon even after a dismissal or an acquittal in order to be eligible for compensation for wrongful
incarceration. See TEX. CIV. PRAC. & REM. CODE ANN. § 103.001 (2011).

Page 5 of 39

Acquittals: In 95 cases, the defendants were acquitted on retrial on the basis of newly
presented evidence that they were not guilty of the crimes for which they were originally
convicted, mostly by juries (at least 84 cases), occasionally by judges (at least six cases).4
Certificates of Innocence: In a small but growing number of cases – 18 to date – courts
have issued “certificates of innocence,” “declarations of wrongful imprisonment,” or
similar judgments of innocence.5 (In one case, the defendant had already received an
executive pardon.)
Posthumous Exonerations: Eleven defendants received posthumous exonerations; two
of them also received a judicial declaration of innocence.

2. Exonerations by Crime
As before, the great majority of known exonerations at the end of 2012 are homicide cases (47%)
and sexual assault cases (33%). But the proportion of exonerations in cases that do not involve
homicide, rape or child sex abuse continues to climb, from 4% in the first comprehensive
national report on exonerations,6 to 18% in the Exoneration Report, to 20% in this 2012 Update.
From March 2012 until the end of that year, there was a corresponding decrease for homicide
exonerations, (from 48% to 47%), and for adult sexual assault exonerations, (from more than
23% to 21%). See Table 1.

In several cases, we know that an exonerated defendant was acquitted at retrial but not whether it was a jury or
bench trial.
5

See, e.g., 735 ILL. COMP. STAT. 5/2-702 (2012) (detailing Illinois’s procedure for filing a petition for a certificate of
innocence).
6

Gross et al. …

Page 6 of 39

Table 1: Exonerations by Crime, 1989 – 2012
CRIME
Homicide
Murder

47%

(493)

46%

(479)

10%
36%

Death sentences
Other murder convictions

Manslaughter

Sexual Assault
Sexual assault on an adult
Child sex abuse

Other Crimes of Violence
Robbery
Attempted murder
Assault
Arson
Kidnapping
Child Abuse
Supporting Terrorism
Miscellaneous

Non-Violent Crimes
Drug crimes
Tax/Fraud/Bribery & Corruption
Gun Possession
Theft/Stolen Property
Solicitation/Conspiracy
Sex Offender Registration
Destruction of Property
Immigration
Miscellaneous

(104)
(375)

(14)

33%

(348)

21%
12%

(221)
(127)

12%

(126)

6%
2%
2%
0.5%
0.5%
0.3%
0.2%
0.3%

(63)
(21)
(22)
(6)
(6)
(3)
(2)
(3)

(83)

3%
1%
0.7%
0.5%
0.6%
0.3%
0.2%
0.4%
1%

(33)
(13)
(7)
(5)
(6)
(3)
(2)
(4)
(10)

100% (1050)

TOTAL
3. Exonerations over Time

As before, we see a rapid increase in the number of known exonerations, from 15 in 1989 to 42
in 1999, followed by an uneven plateau since 2000. But the number of exonerations we know
about has increased across the entire range of years that we cover. From 2000 through 2012 the

Page 7 of 39

annual total has ranged from 45 to 75, and averaged 58; in our previous report that average was
52 per year.
The increase occurred entirely among non-DNA exonerations. DNA exonerations now average
20 per year since 2000 – 34% of all know exonerations, down from 40% in the Exoneration
Report. Overall, the proportion of known exonerations based on DNA dropped from 37% as of
March 1 to 32% at the end of 2012.7 See Figure 1.
Figure 1: Number of Exonerations by Basis, Over Time
ALL

NON-DNA

DNA

Number of Exonerations

80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

Year

The actual numbers of exonerations by year and basis are tabulated below.

BASIS ‘89 ‘90 ‘91 ‘92 ‘93 ‘94 ‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07

‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11 ‘12 Total

DNA

19 341 (32%)

Other 13

44 709 (68%)

Total

63 1050 (100%)

Page 8 of 39

4. DNA and Non-DNA Exonerations, and Time to Exoneration
A majority of all DNA exonerations – 52% – are adult sexual assault cases (176/341); they
accounted for 79% of all adult sexual assault exonerations. As we have noted, the proportion of
DNA cases has dropped since March 2012 as we continue to identify other less well known
exonerations. This drop has occurred across all categories of crime. See Table 2.8

Table 2: Proportion of Exonerations Based
on DNA, by Category of Crime
Homicide

26% (130/493)

All Sexual Assaults

57% (200/348)

Sexual Assault on an adult
Child sex abuse

79% (176/221)
19% (24/127)

Other Crimes of Violence

9% (11/126)

Drug and Property Crimes

0% (0/83)

ALL CASES

32% (341/1050)

In the Exoneration Report last May we noted that in the past few years, the number of DNA
exonerations in murder cases has exceeded the number in rape cases. That pattern has become
better established. From 1989 through 2007, 66% of DNA exonerations were rape cases
(155/234); since 2008, that proportion has dropped to 42%. See Figure 2.

For comparison, here is the same table as it appeared in the Exoneration Report that was released last May:
Table 3: Proportion of Exonerations Based
on DNA, by Category of Crime
Homicide
30% (123/416)
All Sexual Assaults
63% (193/305)
Sexual Assault on an adult
Child sex abuse
Other Crimes of Violence
Drug and Property Crimes
ALL CASES

84% (170/203)
23% (23/102)
10% (9/94)
0% (0/58)
37% (325/873)

Page 9 of 39

Figure 2: DNA Exonerations by Crime, Over Time
Homicide

Other

20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

0
1989

Number of Exonerations

Sexual Assault

Year
Despite this shift, rape remains the underlying factual basis for all DNA exonerations. In 51.5%
of the DNA homicide exonerations in our data (67/130), the defendant was also convicted of a
sexual assault, and in another 20.7% of DNA murder exonerations, there was a rape for which
the defendant was not convicted, usually because it was not charged (27/130). In other words,
DNA exonerations are increasingly about rape-murder rather than rape alone.
The main underlying reason for this shift is probably the aging pool of potential DNA
exonerations. The average time to a DNA exoneration has increased from 7 years in 1993 to 19
years in 2012. See Figure 3. This should be no surprise. Nowadays, 24 years after the first DNA
exonerations, if there is probative DNA in a major felony prosecution it is generally tested before
trial. This has become increasingly true over the past 20 years. As a result, DNA exonerations
are increasingly dominated by defendants who were convicted 20 to 30 years ago or longer.
Innocent murder defendants are much more likely to be in prison 25 to 30 years after conviction
than innocent rape defendants, and they and their supporters are more likely to continue to press
for their release.

Page 10 of 39

DNA has been used in a handful of robbery and attempted murder exonerations. Recently, a lot
of attention has focused on the potential of DNA as an investigative tool for property crimes,
from burglary to auto theft. While DNA may be gaining a foothold in pretrial investigations of
such cases, it seems to have had little impact on reinvestigating property crimes after conviction,
at least so far.
Figure 3: Time to Exoneration by Factual Basis (Five-Year Moving Average)

Time to Exoneration (Years)

DNA

NON-DNA

20.0
18.0
16.0
14.0
12.0
10.0
8.0
6.0
4.0
2.0
0.0

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013

Year of Exoneration

5. Exonerations by Race and Sex
African American defendants continue to be over represented among exonerees, particularly in
sexual assault, robbery and drug cases. (The proportion of African American exonerees is also
high in attempted murder cases, 62%, but there are only 21 such cases in the data.) As we noted
last May, the disparity is greatest in sexual assault cases. African Americans constitute 25% of
prisoners incarcerated for rape, but 62% of those exonerated for such crimes.
Overall, the proportion of African American exonerees has dropped a bit from the Exoneration
Report, from 50% to 47%, with corresponding drops across most crime categories. See Table 3.

Page 11 of 39

Table 3. Exonerations by Race Of Defendant and Type of Crime*
White

Black

Hispanic

Other

TOTAL

37%

47%

14%

99%

32%

62%

99%

65%

24%

99%

14%

62%

18%

100%

18%

63%

20%

101%

39%

37%

16%

102%

24%

55%

21%

100%

Other Non-Violent
Crimes (48)

54%

25%

15%

100%

ALL CRIMES (1025)

39%

47%

12%

100%

Homicide
(484)

Sexual Assault
(219)

Child Sex Abuse
(123)

Attempted Murder
(21)

Robbery
(59)

Other Violent
Crimes (38)
Drug Crime
(33)

_______________
* Table limited to cases with data on race of defendant. Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding.

Fewer than 7% of known exonerations involved female defendants (71/1050). The crimes for
which female exonerees were convicted were generally similar to those for male exonerees, with
a conspicuous exception. More than a third of both genders were convicted of sexual assaults,
but the men were overwhelmingly convicted of raping adult victims, and the women were all
convicted of child sex abuse. See Table 4.
In general, women are heavily concentrated among exonerations in which the victims were
children and in cases in which no crime was committed (as opposed to the great majority of
cases, in which there was a crime but someone else did it). Overall, 57.7% of the female
exonerees (41/71), were convicted of crimes that never occurred – mostly child sex abuse – but
only 14.9% of the men were convicted in no-crime cases (146/979), and 52.1% of female
exonerees were convicted of violent crimes against children (37/71), compared to 17.6%
(172/979) of male exonerees.

Page 12 of 39

Table 4: Exonerations by Gender
and Crime
CRIME

MALE

FEMALE

(979)

(71)

Homicide

47%

41%

Sexual Assault

23%

Child Sex Abuse

11%

32%

Child Abuse

Other Crimes of Violence

12%

14%

Non-Violent Crimes
TOTAL

100%

6. Exonerations by Jurisdiction
The 1050 exonerations we knew about at the end of 2012 came from 45 states, the District of
Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, 22 federal districts, and the military. In May 2012
we reported that the top four states in numbers of exonerations were, in descending order,
Illinois, New York, Texas and California. Those states remained at the top of our list as of the
end of 2012, but the order has changed. California now leads, with 119 exonerations, followed
by Texas, Illinois and New York. See Table 5.
Table 5: Exonerations by State, Top Ten
Exoneration Report

Update 2012

January 1989 - March 2012

January 1989 - December 2012

(N = 873)

(N = 1050)

1. Illinois

101

1. California

119

2. New York

2. Texas

114

3. Texas

3. Illinois

112

4. California

4. New York

104

[Federal

39]

[Federal

52]

5. Michigan

6. Louisiana

6. Florida

7. Florida

7. Louisiana

8. Ohio

8. Pennsylvania

9. Massachusetts

10. Ohio

10. Pennsylvania

Page 13 of 39

Some change in rank order is to be expected as a list such as this grows over time, but the surge
in the number of exonerations in California has been dramatic: we added 40 cases in under a
year, an increase of more than 50%. This rapid growth does not reflect a bumper crop of recent
exonerations; only 5 of these exonerations occurred in 2012.
The reason for the rapid increase in the number of California exonerations is that we
concentrated our search for past exonerations on California. This was a natural choice. California
is the most populous state in the union and had a comparatively low per capita exoneration rate –
three quarters the national average – so we thought might find many cases we had missed. As we
move on to other smaller states, we expect to continue to find exonerations from years past that
we do not yet know about.
California is still below average in the rate of known exonerations per capita, if only slightly so.
See Table 6.9 The order of the top ten states in exonerations per capita has changed relatively
little since the Exoneration Report, with one exception. Texas (which added 11 new exonerations
and 19 previously unknown old ones) moved onto the list, in position 6, and Alabama dropped
off the bottom. See Table 7.
Table 6: Number of Exonerations,
Top Ten States

Table 7: Exonerations Per Capita,
Top Ten States
Rate per
Capita,
Number of
Standardized Exonerations

Number of
Exonerations

Rate per
Capita,
Standardized

State

1. California

119

0.939

1. Illinois

2.567

112

2. Texas

114

1.333

2. Louisiana

2.465

3. Illinois

112

2.567

3. New York

1.578

104

4. New York

104

1.578

4. Wisconsin

1.396

5. Michigan

1.190

5. Massachusetts

1.392

6. Florida

0.594

6. Texas

1.333

114

7. Louisiana

2.465

7. Mississippi

1.288

8. Pennsylvania

0.741

8. Oklahoma

1.254

9. Massachusetts

1.392

9. Michigan

1.190

10. Ohio

0.790

10. Washington

1.137

1,050

1.000

NATION

1.000

1,050

State

NATION

The number of exonerations per capita is standardized. The raw number is divided by the national average (0.340
per 100,000). Thus the standardized rate per capita for the nation as a whole is 1.000, by definition; the rate for
Illinois, for example, means that Illinois had 2.567 times more exonerations per capita than the national average; and
the rate for Florida means that Florida had 0.594 times the national average of exonerations per capita. All rankings
are based on the 2010 United States census, which reported a national population of 308,745,538.

Page 14 of 39

Criminal prosecutions in the United States are almost always handled by county rather than state
authorities. There are 3,028 counties in the United States; we know of exonerations in 337 of
them. In Table 8 we display the top 10 counties in the country by number of exonerations. In
Table 9 we show the top counties in exonerations per capita, for counties with populations over
300,000.10

Table 8: Number of Exonerations,
Top Ten Counties

Table 9: Exonerations Per Capita, Top Ten
Counties with Population over 300,000
Rate per
Capita,
Number of
Standardized Exonerations

Number of
Exonerations

Rate per
Capita,
Standardized

1. Cook IL (Chicago)

4.811

1. New Orleans LA

11.972

2. Dallas TX

6.084

2. Suffolk MA (Boston)

8.145

3. Los Angeles CA

1.318

3. Kern CA

7.704

4. Kern CA

7.704

4. Jefferson LA

6.798

5. Bronx NY

4.458

5. Dallas TX

6.084

6. Suffolk MA (Boston)

8.145

6. Cook IL (Chicago)

4.811

7. Kings NY (Brooklyn)

2.230

7. Bronx NY

4.458

8. Wayne MI (Detroit)

2.907

8. District of Columbia

4.398

9. New York NY
(Manhattan)

3.152

9. Clark WA

3.456

10. Harris TX (Houston)

1.150

10. New York NY
(Manhattan)

3.152

1,050

1.000

NATION

1.000

1,050

County

NATION

County

Table 9 is similar to the comparable one we released in the Exoneration Report. The top 6
counties reappear in the same order, and nine of the ten counties appear on both lists. But the
numbers of exonerations have almost all increased – by one or two in the smaller counties (e.g.,
one additional exoneration each in New Orleans, population 343,829, and in Boston, population
722,023); by larger numbers in the larger counties (e.g., 7 in Cook County, population
5,194,675, and 13 in Dallas County, population 2,368,139).

If we included smaller counties, the list would consist entirely of counties with fewer than 100,000 people that
happened to have a single exoneration or a group of several. See note 9, above, for a description the standardized
rate of exonerations per capita. For the purpose of this analysis, we treat the District of Columbia as a county.

Page 15 of 39

On the other hand, there are no known exonerations in nearly 90% of all counties in the United
States, including some with large populations. Table 10 lists the 10 counties with more than
900,000 people but no exonerations, or just one.
Table 10: Counties with More than 900,000 People
and No More than One Exoneration

County

Population

Number of
Exonerations

Riverside CA

2,189,641

San Bernardino CA

2,035,210

Alameda CA

1,510,271

Hennepin MN

1,152,425

Orange FL

1,145,956

Fairfax VA

1,081,726

Honolulu HI

953,207

Pinellas FL

916,542

Bergen NJ

905,116

Wake NC

900,993

We believe these numbers reflect our ignorance of exonerations that we have not yet identified.
For example, we know of only one exoneration in Alameda County, California, with 1.5 million
people, compared to 10 in Santa Clara County, which borders Alameda on the south and has 1.8
million people. The Northern California Innocence Project in Santa Clara County may have
increased the number of exonerations there. Still, it’s hard to believe that Alameda County,
which has an excellent Public Defender’s Office and many more violent crimes than Santa
Clara,11 has had only one exoneration in the past 24 years. More likely there have been at least
several exonerations in Alameda County, but without a local innocence project, they didn’t
generate enough attention for us to find them, so far.12

In 2009, for example 11,189 violent crimes were reported in Alameda and 5,013 in Santa Clara County.
Reported Crimes and Crime Rates, CALIF. DEP’T OF JUSTICE, OFFICE OF THE ATT’Y GEN., available at
http://ag.ca.gov/cjsc/statisticsdatatabs/CrimeCo.php.
12

Two additional exonerations occurred in Alameda County in 2013, after the period of this Update, and received
substantial attention. See http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4104 and
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4116.

Page 16 of 39

This pattern is changing. The Exoneration Report, based on data from March 2012, listed 16
large counties with no more than one exoneration. We’re now down to 10. Overall, the number
of counties with known exonerations has increased by 12%, from 301 to 337. We expect that
pattern to continue as we continue to learn about more cases from years past.
A complete list of the number of exonerations by state and county is available with this report
(see pg 35.) It is now possible sort exonerations by county on the Summary View page of our
website in order to obtain the names of exonerees in each county.
7. Causes of False Convictions
For all exonerations, the most common causal factors that we have identified are: perjury or false
accusation (52%); official misconduct (43%); and mistaken eyewitness identification (41%).
These proportions are similar to those in the Exoneration Report, except that official misconduct
(formerly 42%) and mistaken witness identification (formerly 43%) have switched positions. See
Table 11.
Table 11: Exonerations by Crime and Contributing Factors
(N=1050)
Mistaken Witness
Identification

Perjury or False
Accusation

False
Confession

False or Misleading
Forensic Evidence

Official
Misconduct

Homicide
(493)

27%

65%

22%

24%

57%

Sexual
Assault (222)

79%

25%

36%

18%

Child Sex
Abuse (125)

21%

78%

20%

34%

Robbery
(63)

86%

13%

25%

Other Violent
Crimes (64)

55%

38%

13%

41%

Non-Violent
Crimes (83)

12%

53%

61%

ALL CASES
(1050)

41%

52%

14%

22%

43%

We noted in the Exoneration Report that the proportion of exonerations with mistaken
eyewitness identifications is lower than previous reports, primarily because we have done a more
careful job than before in separating eyewitness errors and eyewitness lies. That remains true.

Page 17 of 39

The other main finding of the Exoneration Report in this regard was that, as best we can tell,
false conviction is not one pathology with a single set of contributing risk factors but a set of
several different problems with different causal structures depending on the crime. That too
remains true:


For homicide exonerations, the leading cause of false conviction is perjury or false
accusations, mostly deliberate misidentifications. Homicide cases also include a high rate
of official misconduct, and 74% of all false confessions in the database.
The great majority of sexual assault and robbery exonerations include mistaken
eyewitness identifications, mostly by the victims. Many sexual assault cases also include
bad forensic evidence.
Child sex abuse exonerations, by contrast, primarily involve false testimony by victims
who fabricated crimes that never occurred at all.
The small number of drug crime exonerations we have found have a high rate of
deliberate misidentifications in the context of crimes that did occur.






8. Prosecutor and Police Cooperation in Exonerations
Police and prosecutors have always cooperated in a substantial minority of all exonerations. In
2012, for the first time that became a majority – 54% of the cases (34/63).
From 1989 through 2011 the proportion of exonerations with official cooperation ranged from
11% in 1997 to 39% in 2008, while the number of cases varied from 4 to 22. Last year, 2012,
appears to be a break from the past, with sharp increases both in the proportion of cases with
official cooperation and in the number of such exonerations.13 See Figure 4.

The actual numbers of exonerations by year and official cooperation are tabulated below.
Exonerations With Prosecutor or Police Cooperation (PPC) Over Time
‘89 ‘90 ‘91 ‘92 ‘93 ‘94 ‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07

‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11 ‘12 Total

PPC cases

34 317

All cases

63 1050

% PPC

40% 35% 25% 36% 43% 16% 44% 33% 11% 25% 21% 32% 27% 36% 24% 29% 30% 31% 27% 39% 24% 28% 22% 54% 30%

Page 18 of 39

Figure 4: Number of Exonerations with Official Cooperation
40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
‘89 ‘90 ‘91 ‘92 ‘93 ‘94 ‘95 ‘96 ‘97 ‘98 ‘99 ‘00 ‘01 ‘02 ‘03 ‘04 ‘05 ‘06 ‘07 ‘08 ‘09 ‘10 ‘11 ‘12

There is probably no single explanation for this dramatic development.




It may be due in part to the creation of Conviction Integrity Units in several large and
medium-sized prosecutorial offices: Dallas, founded in 2007; Harris County (Houston),
in 2009; New York County (Manhattan), 2010; Santa Clara County (San Jose) and
Kings County (Brooklyn) in 2011; Cook County (Chicago) and Lake County Illinois, in
2012. In addition, some state Attorneys General have undertaken programs to facilitate
exonerations, or helped in exonerating particular defendants (for example, in Virginia and
in Colorado.)
It may also be due in part to the cumulative effects of DNA testing laws across states that
permit post-conviction DNA testing and, in some cases, direct prosecutors and police to
cooperate in obtaining such testing.
More generally, it may reflect a change in climate, a growing recognition by prosecutors
and other law enforcement officers that false convictions are a serious problem that they
need to address.

Innocence organizations – the Innocence Project, the Center on Wrongful Convictions,
Centurion Ministries or one of a few dozen similar groups that have emerged in the past two
decades – had a hand in about 20% of the exonerations we know about (213/1050). The rate of
law enforcement cooperation was essentially the same in cases with innocence organizations,
31% (67/213), and without, 29% (246/837).

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What prosecutors and police did in the exonerations that we classify as including their
cooperation differs from case to case. In some prosecutors and police officers were entirely
responsible for the exonerations: they initiated the post-conviction investigation, found
convincing evidence of innocence, and only then contacted defense attorneys or courts (see
George Shull, Johnathan Moore and David Shawn Pope as examples.) In other cases they
strenuously opposed re-investigation for years, but ultimately changed their view (see Michael
Morton, Troy Hopkins and Terence Garner. In each case in this category, however, prosecutors,
police officers or both contributed to the process of obtaining the exoneration and concurred in
that outcome.14 (The numbers of exonerations with official cooperation are all likely to be
underestimates because there are likely to be cases in which cooperation that occurred is not
apparent from the records at our disposal.)
The proportion of cases with law enforcement cooperation is somewhat higher for DNA
exonerations, 38% (128/341), than for non-DNA exonerations, 27% (189/709). The rate of
cooperation in DNA cases changed over time. From 1989 through 1995 DNA exonerations
averaged about 5 a year, and more than half included such cooperation (18/34). Perhaps at that
early stage DNA exonerations were novel and unlikely to succeed without official support. Since
1996 the number of DNA exonerations rose to an average of 20 a year; the rate of cooperation
across that period is 35% (108/307). It seems to be rising recently. From 2008 through 2011,
39% of DNA exonerations had cooperation from prosecutors or police (34/88); for 2012 it was
53% (10/19).
The proportion of exonerations with cooperation from state officials varies greatly depending on
the category of the crime. It is lowest – 0% – for the exonerations that grew out of the child sex
abuse hysteria prosecutions (CSH) in the mid-1980s to early 1990s.15 It is next lowest for cases
in which the defendants were sentenced to death, 15%; jumps to 31% in murder cases without
death sentences; then to 33% for non-CSH child sex abuse cases; 36% for adult sexual assaults;
41% for drug crimes; and 44% for robbery exonerations. The underlying logic seems apparent:
authorities are more likely to resist exoneration in cases where the crimes were more severe, and
especially in cases that attracted a great deal of public attention. See Table 12.

An exoneration includes cooperation by police or prosecutors if at any point one or more such agencies conducted
or participated in an investigation (including DNA testing) that produced evidence of innocence that led to the
exoneration, or responded promptly to new evidence of innocence by taking actions that resulted in exoneration –
for example, by moving or joining in a motion to dismiss charges against the defendant or by helping seek a pardon
for the defendant – or stated at the time of exoneration that they believe the defendant is innocent. It is not sufficient
for these agencies to fail to oppose actions taken by others to exonerate the defendant, such as motions to dismiss,
petitions for pardon or DNA tests by private parties.
15
See the original Exoneration Report, pgs. 75-78, for more information on child sex abuse hysteria prosecutions.

Page 20 of 39

Table 12: Rate of Law Enforcement Cooperation
in Exoneration by Type of Crime
Child Sex Abuse Hysteria (CSH)

0% (0/49)

Death Sentence

15% (16/104)

Murder without Death Sentence

31% (115/375)

Non-CSH Child Sex Abuse

33% (25/76)

Adult Sexual Assault

36% (81/222)

Drug Crime

41% (14/34)

Robbery

44% (28/63)

ALL CRIMES

30% (317/1050)

The rate of law enforcement cooperation in exonerations also varies greatly by state and by
county. We display those rates in Tables 13 and 14 for, respectively, the 10 states and the 10
counties with the largest number of exonerations.
Table 13: Law Enforcement Cooperation
in States with Most Exonerations

Table 14: Law Enforcement Cooperation
in Counties with Most Exonerations

1. California

26% (31/118)

1. Cook IL (Chicago)

27% (23/85)

2. Texas

46% (53/114)

2. Dallas TX

57% (28/49)

3. Illinois

26% (29/112)

3. Los Angeles CA

32% (13/44)

4. New York

37% (38/104)

4. Kern CA

0% (0/22)

5. Michigan

25% (10/40)

5. Bronx NY

38% (8/21)

6. Florida

42% (16/38)

6. Suffolk MA (Boston)

45% (9/20)

7. Louisiana

16% (6/38)

7. Kings NY (Brooklyn)

35% (7/20)

8. Pennsylvania

38% (12/32)

8. Wayne MI (Detroit)

22% (4/18)

9. Massachusetts

29% (9/31)

9. New York NY
(Manhattan)

44% (8/18)

10. Ohio

16% (5/31)

10. Harris TX (Houston)

50% (8/16)

NATION

30% (313/1,050)

NATION

30% (313/1,050)

Some of the differences by county reflect factors we have discussed. All but two of the 22
exonerations in Kern County, California, were child sex abuse hysteria prosecutions, for which
the national rate of official cooperation is 0%; not surprisingly, that is also the rate for Kern

Page 21 of 39

County. On the other hand, Harris (Houston) (50%) and especially Dallas (57%) are both
counties with active prosecutorial Conviction Integrity Units.
Most of the counties with the largest numbers of exonerations are large urban counties with
above average rates of law enforcement cooperation in exonerations. The exceptions – in
addition to Kern – are Wayne County (Detroit), 22%, and Cook County (Chicago), also 27%,
which has by far the largest number of exonerations of any county in the country and a
somewhat low rate of official support for those exonerations.
Some of the state rates reflect the practices in high-exoneration counties within them. If we
exclude Kern County, the rate for California goes from 26% to 32%, slightly above the national
average. The high rate in Texas, 46% – which leads the country – is driven by Houston and
Dallas, which account for a majority of the exonerations in that state. The New York State rate,
37%, is close to the average for the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan, 39% (23/59), which
between them have a majority of the cases in that state. And Illinois, 26%, is entirely dominated
by Cook County, which has nearly three-quarters of all exonerations in that state (85/118).

Page 22 of 39

II.

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLES OF RECENTLY ADDED EXONERATIONS

The following 7 cases, all added to the Registry since the Exoneration Report, exemplify trends
in the cases we see:








A variety of crimes are represented here, not just rape and murder.
Just two of the seven are DNA exonerations.
The first three are all cases in which no crime actually occurred, though defendants were
convicted of rape, child abuse, or manslaughter.
In two of these no-crime cases, the defendants pled guilty to avoid long prison terms.
Three of the cases described here – Brian Banks, Damon Thibodeaux, and Robert Dewey
– received a great deal of media attention when the defendants were exonerated. The
other 6 exonerations received relatively little public attention or almost none at all.
In several of these cases, prosecutors assisted in the exoneration process.

.
(1) Brian Banks
State: CA
Crime: Rape
Exonerated: 2012
Key Factors: No-crime case (rape), guilty plea to avoid a
long prison term, exonerated when accuser admitted she
lied, prosecutor cooperation, significant publicity

In 2003, 16-year-old Brian Banks was falsely convicted of rape by a classmate. He was
exonerated 9 years later when his accuser admitted she had lied.
In July 2002, 15-year-old Wanetta Gibson, who was attending summer school in Long Beach,
California, returned to class after requesting a bathroom pass half an hour earlier. She then told a
friend that 16-year-old Brian Banks had just raped her and she was no longer a virgin. After
repeating the claim to her sister that afternoon, Gibson reported what happened to school
officials.
That night, Banks, a blossoming football star who had recently accepted a scholarship to the
University of Southern California, was arrested at his parents’ home. He was charged with two
counts of forcible rape and one count of sodomy with a special circumstance of kidnapping.

Page 23 of 39

Facing a potential prison term of 41 years to life, Banks pleaded no contest on July 8, 2003. He
was sentenced to six years in prison.
Banks appealed his decision, contending there was no evidence that a rape had occurred, but the
conviction was affirmed. In the meantime, Gibson’s family filed a lawsuit against the school
district alleging inadequate security. The suit was settled for $1.5 million, split evenly between
the family and their attorney.
After serving five years in prison, Banks was released on parole with an ankle monitor. He was
required to register as a sex offender.
On February 28, 2011, Gibson sent Banks a friend request on Facebook. Banks messaged back
and arranged a time to meet with her. He also contacted the California Innocence Project.
During a video-taped interview, Gibson admitted Banks had not raped her. The two had kissed,
hugged and fondled, but not had sex, she said. But she was afraid of coming forward because she
thought her family might have to give back the $750,000 they received in the lawsuit.
On August 15, 2011, the California Innocence Project filed a petition for a state writ of habeas
corpus, seeking to vacate Banks’ conviction based on Gibson’s recantation. According to the
petition, in addition to the videotaped statements, Gibson previously confessed to a classmate
that she made up the accusation because she did not want her mother to know she was sexually
active, and prior to filing the civil lawsuit, she told her attorney that she had not been raped, but
the lawyer told her to keep quiet.
On May 24, 2012, the conviction was set aside and the charges against Banks, 26, were
dismissed at the request of Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Brentford Ferreira.

(2) Yvonne Eldridge
State: CA
Crime: Child Abuse
Exonerated: 2003
Key Factors: No-crime case (child abuse), ineffective
defense counsel, exonerated when new attorneys presented
evidence of innocence, some publicity

Page 24 of 39

In 1996, Yvonne Eldridge was wrongly convicted of abusing medically fragile foster children in
her care. She was exonerated six years later because her trial lawyer was ineffective, failing to
call experts who could have explained the children’s ailments.
In 1987, Eldridge, an experienced foster mother in Walnut Creek, California, was recruited to
serve as a foster parent in a special program for medically fragile babies. Most of these infants
were born drug-addicted or with life-threatening conditions, and required frequent visits to the
hospital.
In 1991, doctors alleged that Eldridge had intentionally interfered with the medical treatments of
several of the children in her care, and in 1993, investigators testified at an administrative
hearing that Eldridge was responsible for the deaths of three children and tried to harm eight
others. The state claimed that Eldridge suffered from a rare psychiatric disorder that caused her
to lie about the children’s physical conditions in order to receive attention from medical
professionals, leading doctors to order unnecessary medicines and perform unneeded surgeries
on some of Eldridge’s foster children.
In March 1993, California Child Protective Services took custody of Eldridge’s newborn
grandson, who was living in her home, claiming the infant was not safe there. In April, Eldridge
lost her foster care license, and in November 1994, Eldridge was indicted on two charges felony
child abuse.
At her 1996 trial, the two doctors who testified against Eldridge were inexperienced in treating
the severe medical conditions that the foster children were born with, and one had never even
treated the children Eldridge was accused of abusing. Yet on June 3, 1996, a jury convicted
Eldridge of abusing two medically fragile babies in her care.
On July 10, 1996, Eldridge was sentenced to three years in prison. She hired new attorneys who
immediately filed a motion for a new trial, and was allowed to remain free on bond pending this
motion.
Eldridge’s new attorneys argued that her trial lawyer was ineffective because he failed to call
numerous witnesses who could have supported Eldridge’s defense. Among other evidence, they
presented a declaration from a pediatrician saying he could provide medical explanations for all
of the children’s ailments. The lawyers also presented evidence that one of the doctors who
wanted to investigate Eldridge had a history of falsely accusing foster parents of abuse.
On December 21, 2000, a judge ordered a new trial based on the ineffectiveness of Eldridge’s
trial attorney, and in January 8, 2003, prosecutors dismissed the charges against Eldridge.

Page 25 of 39

(3)Teresa and Joel Engberg-Lehmer
State: IA
Crime: Manslaughter
Exonerated: 1998
Key Factors: No-crime case (manslaughter – Shaken Baby
Syndrome), guilty plea to avoid a long prison term,
exonerated when expert testimony used to convict was
proved false, prosecutor cooperation, little publicity
Dr. Thomas Bennett, whose false
testimony led to the conviction.
Photo: qctimes.com

Teresa and Joel Engberg-Lehmer were convicted of shaking their infant son to death in 1997 and
exonerated a year later when experts demonstrated that the child had in fact died of Sudden
Infant Death Syndrome.
On April 4, 1997, Teresa Engberg-Lehmer checked on her three-month-old son at home in
Council Bluffs, Iowa, and found him cold and unresponsive. The boy, Jonathan, was rushed to
the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Iowa State Medical Examiner Dr. Thomas Bennett
performed an autopsy and declared the child’s death a homicide. Bennett said that Jonathan was
a victim of Shaken Baby Syndrome, concluding that he had been violently shaken to death by
one or both of his parents. In July 1997, Teresa and her husband Joel Lehmer were charged with
first degree murder.
Coined in 1972, the term Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is said to describe a situation in which
an infant is shaken so hard that the brain rotates inside the skull, causing severe and potentially
deadly brain injury, but often without any external signs of harm. SBS is said to involve certain
tell-tale symptoms which, when present in an infant who has no outward signs of abuse,
definitively indicate that the child has been violently shaken. In recent years, medical research
has cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of Shaken Baby Syndrome. New studies conducted
since 1997 show that it’s impossible to kill a baby by shaking alone, that any shaking that came
close to producing that result would also produce severe damage to the child’s neck or chest or
both, and that other injuries and diseases can cause the symptoms said to identify SBS.
The Engberg-Lehmers insisted they had never shook their son, but faced with apparently
persuasive medical evidence and the potential of long prison terms if convicted, they pleaded
guilty to involuntary manslaughter in October 1997. They were each sentenced to 15 years in
prison.

Page 26 of 39

Two weeks later, Bennett resigned as medical examiner amid an investigation of the
administration of his office.
In November, Teresa sought help from attorney Stephen Brennecke, who had successfully
defended another SBS case earlier that year in which Dr. Bennett had also made the SBS
diagnosis. At Brennecke’s request, an Iowa City pathologist studied the records, and concluded
that there was no evidence of Shaken Baby Syndrome, but rather that Jonathan had died of
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
When this report was given to Pottawattamie County Attorney Rick Crowl, he sent the file to
another forensic pathologist, who agreed that there was no evidence of shaking. Crowl then
moved to vacate the convictions and to dismiss the charges, and the Engberg-Lehmers were
released from prison on September 28, 1998.

(4) Michael Hash
State: VA
Crime: Murder
Exonerated: 2012
Key Factors: Police and prosecutorial misconduct, false
testimony by police informant and others, some publicity

In 2001, 20-year-old Michael Hash was convicted of the 1996 murder of a 74-year-old woman in
Lignum, Virginia. He was exonerated 11 years later after a judge ruled that police and
prosecutors had hidden evidence of his innocence from the defense and knowingly allowed
witnesses to commit perjury. The judge also found that Hash’s trial lawyer had not properly
investigated the case and had therefore failed to provide an adequate defense.
On July 14, 1996, 74-year-old Thelma Scroggins, a retired mail carrier and church organist, was
found dead in her home in Lignum, Virginia. She had been shot four times in the head. At first, a
neighbor came under suspicion because he owned the type of gun used in the shooting, but he
was not charged and the investigation went cold.
In late 1999, the investigation was reopened. Police questioned Alesia Shelton, who had been
convicted of a robbery and shooting, and who told police that she had heard her cousin, Michael
Hash, and two others, Jason Kloby and Eric Weakley, say they planned to kill Scroggins. All
three men were arrested.

Page 27 of 39

Police questioned Weakley and said that he admitted that he had been involved in the crime and
that Hash had shot Scroggins.
Weakley testified against Hash at his 2001 trial, as did Shelton and Paul Carter, a convicted drug
dealer serving a federal prison sentence, who testified that Hash confessed to the murder when
they were both in jail together after Hash was arrested. Hash was convicted and sentenced to life
in prison.
Kloby was tried separately and acquitted, and Weakley pleaded guilty and was given a reduced
prison term in exchange for testifying against Hash.
In 2012, a judge vacated Hash’s conviction and ordered a new trial, finding that, among other
misconduct, prosecutors had intentionally moved Hash to the same jail as Carter, who was a
known police informant, and had lied to the jury when they said that Carter received no special
deals in exchange for his testimony – in fact, his prison term had been significantly reduced. The
judge also found that Hash’s defense attorney had been ineffective in failing to investigate
another suspect. At a hearing, Weakley recanted his testimony and said that he had no
knowledge of the crime and police had provided him with the details.
On March 13, 2012, the prosecutor resigned. The following day, Hash was released from prison,
and on August 20, 2012, the charges against him were dismissed.

(5) Kian Khatibi
State: NY
Crime: Felonious Assault
Exonerated: 2008
Key Factors: Police misconduct, false testimony,
exonerated when his brother confessed to the crimes, some
publicity

Photo: yonkerstribune.com

Kian Khatibi was falsely convicted of stabbing two men after police threatened witnesses and
rigged a photo lineup. He was exonerated 9 years later after his brother admitted that he himself
had stabbed the men.

Page 28 of 39

In January 1998, 22-year old Khatibi showed up at the Pleasantville, New York police station
after getting into a confrontation at bar. A surveillance video showed him entering at 1:12 a.m.
Police then received a call about a fight in front of the same bar and left the station. Near the
scene of the fight, police encountered William Boyar and Brian Duffy walking down the street.
Both were heavily intoxicated and bleeding from stab wounds.
Several days later, Khatibi learned that a warrant for his arrest had been issued. He went to the
police station, and was immediately arrested for the stabbings.
At his trial in 1999, Khatibi’s brother, Kayvan, told the jury Boyar had instigated an altercation
that led to Kian’s being kicked out of the bar. Kayvan said that he did not see and was not
involved in the fight that left the two men wounded. Neither Boyar nor Duffy man could
definitively identify Kian as the man who stabbed them, but Duffy said he believed Kian was the
assailant. He was convicted on both counts and sentenced to a prison term of seven to 14 years.
Khatibi’s appeals failed, and he was denied parole because he refused to admit his guilt.
Eight years later, Kayvan – who battled drug addiction for years and had been recently released
from rehab – broke down in tears at a family dinner, admitting that he himself had stabbed both
men. Based on this confession, Khatibi’s conviction was vacated on September 23, 2008, his
33rd birthday, and the charges were dismissed several months later.
In 2010, Khatibi filed a federal wrongful conviction lawsuit against the Village of Pleasantville
and two police officers who investigated the crime, charging that the officers had rigged the
photo lineup used to identify him, punched a witness during interrogation, and, when Kayvan
admitted his guilt to police not long after the crime, threatened him and told him to keep his
mouth shut.
In May 2011, Khatibi graduated with honors from New York University, and in 2012, he was
accepted as a law student at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

Page 29 of 39

(6) Damon Thibodeaux
State: LA
Crime: Murder
Exonerated: 2012
Key factors: False confession under police pressure,
exonerated by DNA and evidence of mistaken IDs,
prosecutor cooperation, significant publicity

Damon Thibodeaux was sentenced to die after falsely confessing to a rape and murder under
pressure and threats from police. Fifteen years later he was exonerated by DNA, as well as
evidence of mistaken witness identifications, and evidence that his confession was coerced.
On July 19, 1996, 14-year old Crystal Champagne left for the supermarket near her home in
Marrero, Louisiana, and never returned. Thibodeaux, Crystal’s step-cousin, had been at the
Champagne home when Crystal left for the store. He helped to search for her all night and into
the next day, and then went directly to the police station for questioning, as investigators were
interviewing everyone who had been with Crystal before she disappeared. The interview had just
begun when police learned that Crystal’s body had been found near the levee. She was partially
naked and had been strangled with a wire.
The routine missing-person interview then became a homicide investigation. Thibodeaux insisted
he knew nothing about the murder, but over the course of a nine hour interrogation, police
mounted increasing pressure, saying they knew he was lying, claiming that his alibis had fallen
through, and threatening him with the death penalty if he did not admit what he had done.
Terrified and exhausted after 35 hours without sleep, Thibodeaux eventually broke down and
said he had raped and murdered Crystal. As soon as he was allowed to eat and rest, he quickly
recanted his confession, but it was too late; he had already been charged with rape and murder.
At Thibodeaux’s trial, the prosecution built its case around his confession. On October 3, 1997, a
jury convicted Thibodeaux of first-degree murder and rape. He was sentenced to death.
Thibodeaux filed multiple appeals, but all were denied.
In 2007, the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office agreed to reinvestigate the case along
with a team of pro bono attorneys. The investigation revealed that two women who claimed to
have seen Thibodeaux pacing near the crime scene had actually seen someone there the day after
the body was found, when Thibodeaux was already in custody.
Extensive DNA testing failed to detect any biological material connecting Thibodeaux to the
murder, testing on the cord used to strangle Crystal identified a male DNA profile that belonged
Page 30 of 39

to someone else. The testing also showed that despite Thibodeaux’s confession to rape, Crystal
had not in fact been sexually assaulted.
The prosecution consulted an expert in false confessions, who concluded, as did the defense, that
the confession was the result of police pressure, exhaustion, psychological vulnerability and fear
of the death penalty.
On September 29, 2012, Jefferson Parish District Attorney Paul Connick, Jr., joined the
Innocence Project, the Capital Post-Conviction Project of Louisiana and the law firm of
Fredrikson & Byron in a motion to vacate Thibodeaux’s conviction and death sentence and
dismiss the charges against him, and he was released directly from death row that afternoon.

(7) Antonio Williams
State: AL
Crime: Child Sex Abuse
Exonerated: 2011
Key Factors: False accusation by a child victim,
exonerated after victim recanted, prosecutor cooperation,
little publicity

Antonio Williams was convicted of sexually abusing a child in 2007, and exonerated four years
later when the girl admitted she had lied because the real perpetrator threatened to hurt her if she
told.
After separating from his daughter’s mother, Williams, who lived in Birmingham, Alabama,
regularly visited his daughter at the home of her grandfather, who had custody of the girl. The
girl’s mother had three other children who also lived with their grandfather, and when Williams
went to visit, he would help take care of all the children.
In 2003, it was discovered that one of the girls, who was seven years old, had a sexually
transmitted disease. Social workers investigated, and in 2005, the girl said that Williams had
sexually abused her. He was arrested April 27, 2005.
At his 2007 trial, there was no physical evidence implicating Williams – just the little girl’s
word. Nevertheless, Williams, who is African American, was convicted of two counts of rape by
all-white jury. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Page 31 of 39

Williams vehemently maintained his innocence. He appealed his case, but the conviction was
upheld.
Four years later, in another interview with social workers on an unrelated matter, Williams’
accuser admitted that he had never abused or raped her. She named another man as the rapist,
saying she only accused Williams because the real rapist had threatened to hurt her if she ever
told what he had done.
Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls was notified and quickly took action. At a
hearing before Circuit Judge Stephen Wallace, the girl again denied that Williams had ever raped
or abused her and named the other man as the rapist. The girl’s older half-sister testified that she
had also been abused by the actual rapist. The director of the social service agency that
interviewed the girl also testified, saying that after reviewing the original interview transcripts,
she found that contrary to protocol, the questioner had not asked broad, open-ended questions,
but instead had suggested information to the girl.
On May 16, 2011, Judge Wallace set aside the conviction and ordered a new trial. Prosecutors
declined to re-try Williams, and on August 23, 2011, he was released from prison.

(8) Kristine Bunch
State: IN
Crime: Arson, Murder
Exonerated: 2012
Key Factors: Prosecutorial misconduct, faulty forensic
science, some publicity

In 1996, Kristine Bunch was convicted of setting a fire that claimed the life of her three-year-old
son, Anthony, in a trailer home they shared in Decatur County, Indiana. She was exonerated in
2012 after the court found that prosecutors had withheld from the defense parts of the arson
investigation that could have proved Bunch’s innocence.
At Bunch’s trial, a state arson investigator testified that the fire had been started in two places
using a liquid accelerant, and his testimony was corroborated by a forensic analyst with the U.S.
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).

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An independent arson investigator testified for the defense that the cause of the fire should have
been “classified as undetermined” because there was “a probability” that it had been accidental.
On March 4, 1996, the jury found Bunch, then 22 and pregnant, guilty of murder and arson. She
was sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 60 years for murder and 50 years for arson.
On June 9, 1998, the Indiana Supreme Court affirmed the murder conviction, but vacated the
arson conviction on double jeopardy grounds.
In 2006, the Center on Wrongful Convictions began investigating the case, and found three fire
forensic experts who agreed that the arson testimony presented by the prosecution at Bunch’s
trial had likely been wrong. Attorneys obtained previously undisclosed documents from the ATF
investigation showing that — contrary to the trial testimony the ATF analyst — no fire
accelerant had been found in the bedroom. Kerosene had been found only in the living room,
where there was an innocent explanation for its presence: The family had used a kerosene heater
in the living room during winter months, and when filling it sometimes spilled kerosene on the
floor.
Bunch’s lawyers filed a motion for post-conviction relief, which was at first denied, but in July
2012 the Court of Appeals of Indiana reversed the decision, ruling that Bunch was entitled to a
new trial. This ruling was upheld by the Indiana Supreme Court, and in December 2012, the
prosecution dropped the charges.

(9) Robert Dewey
State: CO
Crime: Murder, Rape
Exonerated: 2012
Key Factors: Exonerated when DNA evidence revealed
the real culprit, prosecutor cooperation, significant
publicity
Photo: nytimes.com

In 1996, Robert Dewey was convicted of the rape and murder of 19-year-old Jacie Taylor in
Palisade, Colorado. He was exonerated in 2012 after DNA testing linked another man to the
crime.

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When Taylor was found raped and strangled in her bathtub in June 1994, investigators focused
on 33-year-old Dewey, a motorcycle buff and recent arrival in town who was staying with
friends of Taylor’s roommate. In April 1995 Dewey was charged with rape and murder.
At his trial, a witness testified that Dewey was not at the apartment where he was staying on the
night of the murder, and another witness testified that Dewey had commented on details of the
murder before that information had been reported. Other witnesses testified that Dewey had
scratch marks on his face the morning after the murder and that the victim, who had met Dewey
prior to the crime, had said she was afraid of him.
Police testified that Dewey had made inconsistent statements about the source of scratches on his
arm and tried to avoid police when they were investigating.
Tests on semen found on the victim showed it was not Dewey’s, but authorities claimed this
meant that Dewey had committed the crime with someone else. Dewey was convicted in 1996
and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2007, Dewey approached the New York-based Innocence Project to seek further DNA testing
of the blood on the shirt.
Dewey’s case was approved for testing through the DNA Justice Review Project, a joint effort to
review cold cases on the part of the attorney general, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and
the Denver County District Attorney’s Office. DNA tests performed on a blanket and on
fingernail scrapings from the victim generated a single male profile which was submitted to the
FBI’s national DNA database (CODIS).
The profile matched that of Douglas Thames Jr., a convicted felon in prison for a rape and
murder. Investigators later learned that Thames was staying within a block of Taylor’s apartment
on the night she was murdered.
Mesa County Assistant District Attorney Rich Tuttle conducted an extensive investigation and as
a result, in May 2012, Tuttle joined with Dewey’s lawyers in asking that the conviction be
vacated. The motion was granted, the charges were dismissed, and Dewey was released.
On the same day, Thames was charged with Taylor's murder.

Exonerations by State and County 1989–2012
In order to obtain the names of exonerees in each county, sort exonerations by county on the
Summary View page of our website.

San Joaquin 1
San Mateo 2
Santa Barbara 1
Santa Clara 10
Siskiyou 2

Alabama (17)
Baldwin 1
Choctaw 1
Coffee 1
Jefferson 6
Marshall 1
Monroe 1
Montgomery 3
Morgan 2
Tuscaloosa 1

Colorado (3)
Denver 1
Larimer 1
Mesa 1

Alaska (1)
Petersburg 1

Connecticut (8)
Fairfield 3
Hartford 3
Middlesex 1
New Haven 1

Arizona (12)
Maricopa 5
Pima 6
Yavapai 1

District of Columbia (9)

Arkansas (2)
Clark 1
Pulaski 1

Florida (38)
Bradford 1
Brevard 2
Broward 10
DeSoto 1
Duval 1
Hillsborough 4
Manatee 3
Martin 1
Miami-Dade 4
Monroe 1
Orange 1
Palm Beach 2
Pasco 2
Pinellas 1
Polk 4

California (119)
Alameda 1
Butte 1
Contra Costa 3
Fresno 2
Kern 22
Lake 1
Los Angeles 44
Marin 1
Merced 1
Monterey 2
Orange 9
Riverside 1
Sacramento 2
San Diego 9
San Francisco 4
35

Georgia (16)
Carroll 1
Chatham 2
Clayton 2
Cobb 1
DeKalb 2
Fulton 4
Hart 1
Meriwether 1
Tift 1
Whitfield 1

Iowa (5)
Marshall 1
Pottawattamie 3
Woodbury 1
Kansas (3)
Douglas 1
Riley 1
Shawnee 1
Kentucky (8)
Bullitt 1
Butler 1
Jefferson 4
Kenton 1
Whitley 1

Hawaii (1)
Maui 1
Idaho (2)
Canyon 1
Kootenai 1

Louisiana (38)
Caddo 1
Calcasieu 1
East Baton Rouge 1
Iberia 1
Jackson 1
Jefferson 10
Orleans 14
Sabine 1
St. Tammany 3
Terrebonne 2
Union 2
Washington 1

Illinois (112)
Champaign 2
Cook 85
DuPage 3
Edgar 2
Iroquois 2
Jackson 1
Kane 3
Lake 4
Lawrence 1
Madison 1
McHenry 1
McLean 2
St. Clair 4
Will 1

Maryland (12)
Baltimore 3
Baltimore City 5
Calvert 1
Howard 1
Montgomery 2

Indiana (14)
Allen 1
Decatur 1
Elkhart 2
Hancock 1
Henry 2
Knox 1
Lake 1
Madison 1
Marion 2
St. Joseph 1
Vigo 1

Massachusetts (31)
Berkshire 1
Bristol 1
Hampden 3
Middlesex 5
Suffolk 20
Worcester 1

Michigan (40)
Branch 1
Dickinson 1
Hillsdale 1
Ingham 1
Ionia 1
Jackson 1
Kent 1
Macomb 7
Newaygo 1
Oakland 2
Otsego 4
St. Clair 1
Wayne 18

Nebraska (7)
Gage 6
Lancaster 1
Nevada (5)
Churchill 2
Clark 2
Nevada 1
New Hampshire (1)
Rockingham 1
New Jersey (10)
Atlantic 1
Burlington 1
Essex 4
Hudson 1
Middlesex 1
Monmouth 1
Union 1

Minnesota (6)
Douglas 1
Hennepin 1
Ramsey 3
St. Louis 1
Mississippi (13)
Bolivar 1
Forrest 3
Hinds 3
Lowndes 1
Noxubee 2
Oktibbeha 1
Panola 1
Sunflower 1

New Mexico (2)
Bernalillo 1
Grant 1
New York (104)
Bronx 21
Cayuga 2
Clinton 1
Dutchess 1
Erie 4
Kings 19
Madison 1
Monroe 5
Nassau 3
New York 17
Oneida 2
Onondaga 2
Ontario 1
Orange 1
Queens 12
Richmond 1
St. Lawrence 1
Suffolk 5
Tompkins 1
Westchester 4

Missouri (21)
Cass 1
Clay 2
Cole 3
Greene 2
Jackson 1
Jasper 1
Jefferson 1
Osage 1
Scott 1
St. Louis 3
St. Louis City 4
Vernon 1
Montana (3)
Richland 1
Silver Bow 1
Yellowstone 1

North Carolina (25)
Alamance 1
Bertie 1
Brunswick 1
Buncombe 2
Catawba 2
Chowan 2
Duplin 1
Durham 1
Forsyth 3
Lee 1
Madison 1
Mecklenburg 2
Onslow 2
Union 1
Wake 1
Wayne 2
Wilson 1

Pennsylvania (32)
Adams 1
Allegheny 6
Centre 1
Chester 1
Cumberland 1
Dauphin 5
Delaware 2
Erie 2
Lancaster 1
Lawrence 2
Montgomery 1
Philadelphia 9
Rhode Island (3)
Kent 1
Providence 2
South Carolina (3)
Dillon 1
Lexington 1
Orangeburg 1

Ohio (31)
Cuyahoga 8
Franklin 7
Hamilton 3
Hocking 1
Licking 1
Lucas 2
Montgomery 2
Pike 1
Portage 2
Summit 3
Tuscarawas 1

Tennessee (8)
Jefferson 1
Maury 1
McMinn 1
Shelby 2
Sumner 2
Union 1
Texas (114)
Angelina 2
Atascaco 1
Bexar 1
Burleson 1
Cameron 1
Collin 1
Dallas 49
El Paso 3
Ellis 1
Hale 1
Harris 16
Hopkins 1
Hutchinson 1
Jefferson 2
Lamb 2
Lubbock 2
McLennan 4
Montgomery 3
Nueces 1

Oklahoma (16)
Cleveland 3
Custer 1
Oklahoma 4
Osage 1
Pontotoc 3
Tulsa 4
Oregon (7)
Clackamas 1
Lane 2
Multnomah 2
Polk 1
Yamhill 1

Pecos 1
Rains 2
San Jacinto 1
Smith 1
Tarrant 4
Travis 8
Upshur 1
Uvalde 1
Williamson 1

Wisconsin (27)
Brown 1
Buffalo 1
Dane 4
Dodge 1
Douglas 1
Eau Claire 1
Jefferson 1
Kewaunee 1
Langlade 1
Manitowoc 1
Milwaukee 10
Racine 1
Rock 1
Washington 1
Wood 1

Utah (5)
Beaver 1
Juab 2
Salt Lake 2
Virginia (27)
Arlington 3
Augusta 1
Chesapeake City 1
Culpeper 3
Greensville 1
Hampton City 2
Hanover 1
Nelson 1
Newport News 1
Norfolk City 5
Powhatan 1
Richmond City 5
St. James 1
Virginia Beach 1

Wyoming (1)
Sublette 1

Washington (26)
Benton 1
Chelan 11
Clark 5
Cowlitz 1
Grant 1
King 3
Pierce 2
Spokane 1
Yakima 1
West Virginia (7)
Cabell 1
Kanawha 5
Pocahontas 1

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