wrongful convictions
February 13, 2020 -
Sharpe recently won his release from a North Carolina prison after serving 25 years for a murder he did not commit. He knows his story is not an anomaly — and he is using it to fight for systemic change.
October 10, 2019 -
Reed, who is African-American, was convicted in 1998 of raping and murdering a white woman based on DNA evidence — but he says they were having a secret affair, which the woman's cousin confirms. The case fits a pattern of questionable convictions of Black men for crimes against whites in Texas.
August 17, 2017 -
Law professor Angela A. Allen-Bell of Southern University discusses the connections between slavery and mass incarceration in the context of the planned Aug. 19 march in Washington, D.C. The gathering is calling for the 13th Amendment's enslavement clause to be amended to abolish legalized slavery in prisons.
April 12, 2017 -
The effort to release a North Carolina man who many believe has been imprisoned for over 20 years for a murder he did not commit is getting renewed attention — and shining a spotlight on a criminal justice system that's seven times more likely to convict innocent Black people of murder than innocent whites.
March 13, 2014 -
This week Glenn Ford, a black man wrongfully convicted of murder by an all-white jury in Louisiana, was freed after spending 30 years on death row at the state's notorious Angola penitentiary. What did he endure in a place where a federal judge has ruled conditions amount to "cruel and unusual punishment"?
May 2, 2013 -
In the world of abusive prosecutors, Ken Anderson stands out: Anderson, a Texas prosecutor who abused his authority to help send an innocent man to prison for decades, now faces 10 years behind bars for his misconduct.
May 23, 2012 -
A new database tracks exonerations of people who were falsely convicted of crimes, finding that almost a third of them took place in Southern states.