Daniel Villegas, 37, of El Paso, Texas was exonerated Tuesday after spending nearly 20 years in prison for a double homicide that he did not commit. In 1995, Villegas, then only 16 years old, was wrongfully convicted of the murders of two teenagers in a 1993 drive-by shooting. Although the double murder case was critically lacking in evidence, Villegas’ conviction was largely based on a false confession that he said was coerced by a former El Paso police detective, who had allegedly threatened Villegas. False confessions provided by youth have become a more pervasive issue regarding wrongful convictions in the United States. In a recent study of 328 wrongful convictions in the U.S., it was found that forty-four percent of juveniles provided a false confession in comparison to only thirteen percent of adults.  Read the full story here.
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