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Exoneration
Exoneration occurs when the conviction for a crime is reversed, either through demonstration of innocence, a flaw in the conviction, or otherwise. Attempts to exonerate individuals are particularly controversial in death penalty cases, especially where new evidence is put forth after the execution has taken place. The transitive verb, "to exonerate" can also mean to informally absolve one from blame. The term "exoneration" also is used in criminal law to indicate a surety, i.e. bail bond has been satisfied, completed, and exonerated. The judge orders the bond exonerated; the clerk of court time stamps the original bail bond power and indicates exonerated as the judicial order. Based on DNA evidence DNA evidence is a relatively new instrument of exoneration. The first convicted defendant from a United States prison to be released on account of DNA testing was David Vasquez, who had been convicted of homicide, in 1989. Subsequently, DNA evidence was used to exonerate a number of ...
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List Of Exonerated Death Row Inmates
This list contains names of people who were found guilty of capital crimes and placed on death row but later found to be wrongly convicted. Many of these exonerees' sentences were overturned by acquittal or pardon, but some of those listed were exonerated posthumously. The state listed is that in which the conviction occurred, the year is that of release and the case is that which overturned the conviction. This list does not include: # Posthumous pardons for individuals executed before 1950. # Inmates who were given life sentences when their country, province or state abolished the death penalty. # People who were threatened with death and never jailed. # People who were jailed by extralegal groups or courts, for example, as often occurs in cases of sentences of stoning. Canada * Steven Truscott was convicted of a schoolmate's murder in 1959 and sentenced at age 14 to death by hanging. His sentence was commuted to life in prison four months later, and he was paroled in 1969. ...
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List Of Wrongful Convictions In The United States
This list of wrongful convictions in the United States includes people who have been legally exonerated, including people whose convictions have been overturned or vacated, and who have not been retried because the charges were dismissed by the states. It also includes some historic cases of people who have not been formally exonerated (by a formal process such as has existed in the United States since the mid 20th century) but who historians believe are factually innocent. Generally, this means that research by historians has revealed original conditions of bias or extrajudicial actions that related to their convictions and/or executions. Crime descriptions marked with an asterisk (*) indicate that the events were later determined not to be criminal acts. People who were wrongfully accused are sometimes never released. By August 2024, a total of 3,582 exonerations were mentioned in the National Registry of Exonerations. The total time these exonerated people spent in prison adds ...
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National Registry Of Exonerations
The National Registry of Exonerations is a project of the University of Michigan Law School, Michigan State University College of Law and the University of California Irvine Newkirk Center for Science and Society. The Registry was co-founded in 2012 with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law to provide detailed information about known exonerations in the United States since 1989. As of February 6, 2020, the Registry has 2,551 known exonerations in the United States since 1989. The National Registry does not include more than 1,800 defendants cleared in 15 large-scale police misconduct, police scandals that came to light between 1989 and March 7, 2017, in which officers systematically framed innocent defendants. The co-founders of the Registry are Rob Warden, then the executive director of Northwestern's Center on Wrongful Convictions, and Michigan Law professor Samuel R. Gross, who with Michael Shaffer wrote the report ''Exonerations in the Unite ...
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Innocence Project
Innocence Project, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal organization that works to exonerate the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and other forms of post-conviction relief, as well as advocates for criminal justice reform to prevent future injustice. The group cites various studies estimating that in the United States between 1% and 10% of all prisoners are innocent. The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, who gained national attention in the mid-1990s as part of the " Dream Team" of lawyers who formed part of the defense in the O. J. Simpson murder case. , the Innocence Project has successfully overturn more than 300 convictions through DNA-based exonerations. In 2021, the Innocence Project received the biennial Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty by Cato Institute, awarded in recognition and gratitude for its work to ensure liberty and justice for all. In March 2022, The Innocence Project won two Webby Awards for its ''Happi ...
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Witness To Innocence
Witness to Innocence (WTI) is a non-profit organization based out of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, dedicated to the effort of abolishing the death penalty in the United States. WTI began as a project of The Moratorium Campaign, led by Jené O'Keefe. Kurt Rosenberg took over in 2005 with sponsorship from Sister Helen Prejean, Witness to Innocence is the only nationwide organization composed of exonerated former death row prisoners, men who were sentenced to death only to later have their innocence revealed. WTI supports these exonerated death row survivors through semi-annual retreats and by running a speakers' bureau. Mission statement Witness to Innocence works to end the death penalty by bringing to light the crisis of wrongful convictions in death sentencing in the United States. In addition, it seeks to provide organizational and peer-to-peer support to exonerated former death row prisoners and their loved ones. The organization, which is composed of, by and for exonerated ...
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Centurion (organization)
Centurion (formerly Centurion Ministries) is a non-profit organization located in Princeton, New Jersey, with a mission to exonerate innocent individuals who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life sentences or death. In many of the cases Centurion takes on, no DNA or other scientific evidence is available to prove their clients’ innocence. Centurion does not require the availability of specific evidence to take on a case. Centurion conducts case re-investigations and provides legal representation and post-release support for the wrongly convicted.Golin, Sarah"Working to Save Innocent Souls" "The Washington Post", October 25, 2008, accessed June 29, 2011 History Centurion Ministries was founded in 1983 by Jim McCloskey as a result of his investigation on behalf of a prisoner, Jorge De Los Santos. McCloskey learned of De Los Santos in 1980 while a seminary student at Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, New Jersey. McCloskey used his own funds to investigate De ...
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University Of Michigan Law School
The University of Michigan Law School (branded as Michigan Law) is the law school of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Founded in 1859, the school offers Master of Laws (LLM), Master of Comparative Law (MCL), Juris Doctor (JD), and Doctor of the Science of Law (SJD) degree programs. The law school is primarily supported through student tuition, private gifts, and endowment payouts, with less than 2% of its expenses covered by state appropriations. It is ranked as the eighth wealthiest law school in the nation based on endowments per student, with an endowment totaling over $500 million as of 2022. As of 2024, the law school enrolls 990 students and employs 119 full-time faculty members and 89 part–time faculty members. Notable alumni include U.S. Supreme Court Justices Frank Murphy, William Rufus Day, and George Sutherland, as well as a number of heads of state and corporate executives. Approximately 98% of Class of 2022 gr ...
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Conviction (law)
In law, a conviction is the determination by a court of law that a defendant is guilty of a crime. A conviction may follow a guilty plea that is accepted by the court, a jury trial in which a verdict of guilty is delivered, or a trial by judge in which the defendant is found guilty. The opposite of a conviction is an acquittal (that is, "not guilty"). In Scotland, there can also be a verdict of " not proven", which is considered an acquittal. Sometimes, despite a defendant being found guilty, the court may order that the defendant not be convicted. This is known as a discharge and is used in countries including England, Wales, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. In any criminal justice system, innocent people are sometimes convicted. Appeal mechanisms and post conviction relief procedures may help to address this issue to some extent. An error leading to the conviction of an innocent person is known as a miscarriage of justice. In some judicial systems, the prosecution ma ...
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Northwestern University School Of Law
The Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law (formerly known as Northwestern University School of Law from 1891 to 2015) is the law school of Northwestern University, a Private university, private research university. The law school is located on the university's Chicago campus. Northwestern Law is considered part of the T14 Law, T14, an unofficial designation in the legal community for the best law schools in the United States. Founded in 1859, it was the first law school established in Chicago. Notable alumni include numerous governors of several states; Arthur Goldberg, United States Supreme Court Justice, United States Supreme Court justice; Adlai Stevenson II, Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois, cabinet secretary, and Democratic presidential candidate; John Paul Stevens, United States Supreme Court justice; Newton Minow, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC); and Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago (1983–87) and, previous ...
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Laura Sullivan
Laura Sullivan (born about 1974) is a correspondent and investigative reporter for National Public Radio (NPR). Her investigations air regularly on ''Morning Edition'', ''All Things Considered'', and other NPR programs. She is also an on-air correspondent for the PBS show Frontline. Sullivan's work specializes in shedding light on some of the country's most disadvantaged people. She is one of NPR's most decorated journalists, with three Peabody Awards, three Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, and more than a dozen other prestigious national awards. Early life and education Sullivan graduated from Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco, California, and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. In 1996, Sullivan and two fellow university seniors expanded a class assignment that ultimately freed four men (Ford Heights Four) who had been wrongfully convicted of a 1978 murder in Chicago's South Side; two were death-row inmates. The case was one of ...
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University Of Michigan
The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Michigan is one of the earliest American research universities and is a founding member of the Association of American Universities. In the fall of 2023, the university employed 8,189 faculty members and enrolled 52,065 students in its programs. The university is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". It consists of nineteen colleges and offers 250 degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The university is Higher education accreditation in the United States, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. In 2021, it ranked third among American universities in List of countries by research and development spending, research expe ...
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Crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane and Conoghan (editors), ''The New Oxford Companion to Law'', Oxford University Press, 2008 (), p. 263Google Books). though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a Category of being, category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence (or criminal offence) is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society, or the state ("a public wrong"). Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law. The notion that acts such as murder, rape, and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offence is def ...
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