Centurion (formerly Centurion Ministries) is a non-profit organization located in

Princeton, New Jersey Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of whi ...

, with a mission to exonerate innocent individuals who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life sentences or death. Centurion takes on cases with no DNA evidence available to prove their clients’ innocence. 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 A seminary, school of theology, theological seminary, or divinity school is an educational institution for educating students (sometimes called ''seminarians'') in scripture, theology, generally to prepare them for ordination to serve as clergy ...

student at

Princeton Theological Seminary Princeton Theological Seminary (PTSem), officially The Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, is a private school of theology in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1812 under the auspices of Archibald Alexander, the General Assembly o ...

. McCloskey used his own funds to investigate De Los Santos' claim of innocence. He located the chief witness against De Los Santos, who recanted his false trial testimony. McCloskey then hired Paul Casteleiro, a Hoboken lawyer, to write the

writ In common law, a writ (Anglo-Saxon ''gewrit'', Latin ''breve'') is a formal written order issued by a body with administrative or judicial jurisdiction; in modern usage, this body is generally a court. Warrants, prerogative writs, subpoenas, ...

to bring De Los Santos' case back into court. A U.S. District Court judge overturned the conviction and in 1983 De Los Santos was freed. Centurion is the first organization to investigate cases of wrongful convictions in the US and Canada. In 1987, California businesswoman, Kate Germond, joined McCloskey and together they built an organization that has secured the release of 63 (as of 15 October, 2019) wrongly convicted men and women from all across the United States and Canada. McCloskey retired in May 2015 and Germond is now the Executive Director of Centurion. Centurion continues to seek exoneration of wrongly convicted people through a thorough field investigation.

Selected cases

Jorge De Los Santos

Newark, NJ Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.US District Court The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district, which each cover one U.S. state or, in some cases, a portion of a state. Each district co ...

Judge

Frederick B. Lacey Frederick Bernard Lacey (September 9, 1920 – April 1, 2017) was a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey. Education and career Lacey was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1920 to Frederick ...

. The judge said testimony from a jailhouse witness that convicted De Los Santos "reeked of

perjury Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding."Perjury The act or an inst ...

" and that the

prosecutor A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal tria ...

knew it. Centurion's investigation yielded the new evidence that freed De Los Santos."

Kerry Max Cook

Tyler, TX Tyler is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the largest city and county seat of Smith County. It is also the largest city in Northeast Texas. With a 2020 census population of 105,995, Tyler was the 33rd most populous city in Texas and 2 ...

. "In November, 1997,

Kerry Max Cook Kerry Max Cook (born 1956) is an American former death row inmate who was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 21-year-old Linda Jo Edwards in 1977. Biography Kerry Max Cook was born in Stuttgart, West Germany, an ...

was freed after spending nearly 20 years on

death row Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution ( ...

for a murder in which he had no involvement. This was the crowning moment of a grueling seven-year effort by Centurion Ministries on Cook's behalf. Texas' highest court threw out the

conviction In law, a conviction is the verdict reached by a court of law finding a defendant guilty of a crime. 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 ...

and ruled that the state's "illicit manipulation of the evidence permeated the entire investigation of the murder", and that the state "gained a conviction based on

fraud In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compen ...

and ignored its own duty to seek the truth""

David Milgaard

Saskatoon, Canada Saskatoon () is the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It straddles a bend in the South Saskatchewan River in the central region of the province. It is located along the Trans-Canada Yellowhead Highway, and has served as t ...

. An order of the

Canadian Supreme Court The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC; french: Cour suprême du Canada, CSC) is the highest court in the judicial system of Canada. It comprises nine justices, whose decisions are the ultimate application of Canadian law, and grants permission to ...

freed

David Milgaard David Milgaard (July 7, 1952 – May 15, 2022) was a Canadian man who was wrongfully convicted for the 1969 rape and murder of nursing student Gail Miller in Saskatoon and imprisoned for 23 years. He was eventually released and exonerated. U ...

on April 16, 1992 after 23 years of imprisonment. Centurion's two-year investigation of the rape/murder case established the identity of the real killer. The Supreme Court recognized that "the continued conviction of Milgaard amounts to a

miscarriage of justice A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Inno ...

" Then, a 1997

DNA testing Genetic testing, also known as DNA testing, is used to identify changes in DNA sequence or chromosome structure. Genetic testing can also include measuring the results of genetic changes, such as RNA analysis as an output of gene expression, or ...

of physical evidence confirmed Milgaard's innocence and resulted in the arrest of the actual killer.

Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt

Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...

. In the late 1960s,

Geronimo Pratt Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt (September 13, 1947 – June 2, 2011), also known as Geronimo Ji-Jaga and Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt, was a decorated military veteran and a high-ranking member of the Black Panther Party in the United States in the late 1960s an ...

was the leader of the Los Angeles

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxist-Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, Cali ...

. In 1972, Pratt was convicted of a 1968 murder on a

Santa Monica, CA Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to i ...

, tennis court. After 27 years of imprisonment and many denials of

habeas corpus ''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...

petitions, Pratt was granted a new trial and then freed in June 1997 by

Orange County Superior Court The Superior Court of California, County of Orange, also known as the Orange County Superior Court or Orange Superior Court, is the branch of the California superior court with jurisdiction over Orange County. History Orange County was partiti ...

Judge Everett Dickey. After conducting an extensive

evidentiary hearing Within some criminal justice systems, a preliminary hearing, preliminary examination, preliminary inquiry, evidentiary hearing or probable cause hearing is a proceeding, after a criminal complaint has been filed by the prosecutor, to determine wh ...

, Judge Dickey ruled that the state's primary witness was in fact an FBI,

LAPD The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), officially known as the City of Los Angeles Police Department, is the municipal Police, police department of Los Angeles, California. With 9,974 police officers and 3,000 civilian staff, it is the thir ...

, and LADA informant, who had significantly lied against Pratt at trial. This culminated a four-year effort by Centurion on Pratt's behalf."

Darryl Burton

St. Louis, Mo St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, whic ...

. Based primarily on the alleged eyewitness account by a criminal informant for the St. Louis Police, Darryl Burton spent 24 years confined in

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

prisons for the 1984 fatal shooting of Donald Bell at an Amoco gas station. The cashier at the gas station at the time of the shooting testified at a 2007 post conviction hearing that she had told the police they had the wrong man. She stated that shooter was light complected while Burton is very dark skinned. Freeing Burton in August 2008, the Cole County judge found that the cashier's certainty that Mr. Burton was not the killer to be "clear, credible, and powerful." The judge also ruled that the informant's extensive

criminal history A criminal record, police record, or colloquially RAP sheet (Record of Arrests and Prosecutions) is a record of a person's criminal history. The information included in a criminal record and the existence of a criminal record varies between coun ...

was kept from the defense; had the

jury A jury is a sworn body of people (jurors) convened to hear evidence and render an impartial verdict (a finding of fact on a question) officially submitted to them by a court, or to set a penalty or judgment. Juries developed in England du ...

known of it, it would have provided "persuasive evidence of the defendant's innocence."

News

"Grisham awed by work of Centurion Ministries to free wrongly convicted inmates"
The Trenton Times, 2010
"The Exonerator"
Miller-McCune, 2010

Christian Science Monitor, 2009
"Finding Truth That May Set Someone Free"
US1, 2009

The Washington Post, 2008

The Star Ledger, 2008
"Miracle Worker"
American Way Magazine, 2006

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.centurion.org/ Non-profit organizations based in Princeton, New Jersey Organizations established in 1983