Michael Wayne Hash walked out of the Culpeper County courthouse a free man with his murder conviction and life sentence dismissed. The judge ruled that Hash’s actual innocence claim had merit and his conviction was infected with police and prosecutorial…
Dennis Maher spent over 19 years in prison before he was exonerated in 2003 of two rapes. It took another nine years for his record to be completely expunged. Last month, Maher’s name was finally cleared. Maher was exonerated in…
K’vaughn Hines, 19, was charged with rape in January and spent more than four months behind bars before a DNA test exonerated him. His attorney, James Shalleck, told the Maryland Gazette, “This is a case of an example of why…
Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison before being exonerated in 2006, wrote an article for the Examiner.com critiquing the New York-based Innocence Project’s recent report “Making Up for Lost Time: What the Wrongfully Convicted Endure and How to…
Authors at the University of Florida have researched the negative reactions and stigma associated with exonerated persons compared to parolees and average individuals. The abstract of the article “After Exoneration: An Investigation of Stigma and Wrongfully Convicted Persons” states: Research…
Kirk Odom became the second man in two months to have his rape conviction overturned due to erroneous hair matches. Odom, 49, was released in 2003 but only found to have been wrongfully convicted early this July after a court-ordered…
Life has been hard for Robert Dewey since he was released from prison in April. The Colorado exoneree spent 16 years wrongfully imprisoned and left empty-handed. Not only was Dewey denied access to all the post-release aid that parolees are…
LaMonte Armstrong is trying to put his life back together. However, freedom has not come easily. Armstrong was released at the end of June after a judge threw out his murder conviction due to prosecutorial misconduct. He was originally implicated…
Marcus Lyons was wrongly convicted of rape in 1987. He was later exonerated through DNA evidence in 2007, received a full pardon in 2008 and last month he received a $5 million settlement from the town of Woodbridge for his…
Compensation for wrongful conviction is already hard to obtain in many states but a bill recently passed by the North Carolina state legislature places even more obstacles in front of exonerees who have already endured so much harm. The new…
