Борцы за отмену смертной казни часто ссылаются на слишком высокую цену судебной ошибки. Даже в случае пересмотра приговора жизнь человеку уже не вернёшь. Diletant.media и Андрей Позняков решили ещё раз назвать имена некоторых из тех, кто был оправдан уже после казни.
В этом печальном списке совершенно особое место занимает американский подросток Стинни Джордж. Он стал самым юным смертником XX века — на момент казни ему не исполнилось ещё 15 лет. Джорджа судили по делу об убийстве двух девочек — 8 и 11 лет в 1944 г. Преступление было совершено в городке Алколу в Южной Каролине. Он был разделён железной дорогой на две части — ту, где жили белые, и ту, где жили темнокожие. Стинни Джордж был из второй половины, куда погожим мартовским деньком решили съездить на велосипедах за цветами две девочки. Их тела впоследствии нашли в канаве, а Джордж, по версии следствия, оказался последним, с кем они общались. Разбирательство длилось всего три месяца, родители темнокожего подростка были вынуждены бежать из города, бросив сына. Скорым был и суд — ключевые показания дали полицейские, которые уверяли, что фигурант дела признался им в убийстве. Присяжные за десять минут совещания признали Джорджа виновным. 16 июня 1944 его казнили на электрическом стуле.
Спустя 70 лет выяснилось, что юный смертник перед казнью плакал
Вернулись к этому делу лишь в 2013: о невиновности Джорджа заявил его сокамерник. До этого предположения о судебной ошибке легли в основу романа Дэвида Стаута “Скелеты Каролины” и фильма “83 дня”. В 2014-м состоялся повторный судебный процесс. Стинни Джорджа оправдали — посмертно.
Почти 90 лет ушло на то, чтобы добиться реабилитации австралийца Колина Кэмпбелла Росса. Его повесили в 1922 г. по делу об изнасиловании и убийстве — жертвой преступника стала 12-летняя Альма Тиршке. Росс держал свой кабак. Главной уликой против него стала прядь светлых волос, которую обнаружили на одеяле на его кровати. Прокурор смог убедить суд, что эти волосы принадлежали именно жертве насильника. Росс до конца настаивал на своей невиновности. Несмотря на это его приговорили к казни и через четыре месяца повесили.
Уже в середине девяностых материалы дела оказались в распоряжении исследователя Кэвина Моргана. Он использовал современные методы для проверки данных о том, что волосы принадлежали убитой. Эта версия не подтвердилась. Результаты анализа легли в основу книги, которая обернулась скандалом. Потомки Росса и Тиршке потребовали пересмотра дела — генпрокурор штата Виктория признал обвинительное заключение ошибочным, а Верховный суд реабилитировал казнённого.
3
Китайское правосудие: дело Хууджилта
3 голоса
Грандиозным скандалом в КНР обернулось дело об изнасиловании и убийстве посетительницы общественного туалета в столице Внутренней Монголии Хух-Хото. Преступление было совершено в январе 1996 г., правоохранители оперативно задержали местного жителя по имени Хууджилт. Он дал признательные показания, был осуждён и казнён уже в июне.
Об этих событиях не вспоминали почти десять лет и так и не вспомнили бы, если бы не задержание серийного маньяка Чжао Чжихуна. Тот взял на себя ответственность за 10 изнасилований и убийств, в том числе за преступление, за которое казнили Хууджилта. Дело 1996 года вернули на новое рассмотрение. В декабре 2014 г. приговор отменили.
Суд признал серьёзные недочёты при рассмотрении дела Хууджилта
Родственникам казнённого по ошибке выплатили крупную по китайским меркам компенсацию: 30 тысяч юаней, почти 5 тысяч долларов. Следствие установило, что Хууджилт мог дать признательные показания под давлением, к ответственности привлекли почти три десятка чиновников. Скандал был настолько грандиозным, что стал ключевой темой ежегодного отчёта органов суда и прокуратуры на сессии Всекитайского собрания народных представителей и Народного политического консультативного совета Китая.
В камере смертников в 1876-м оказался ещё один подросток, британец Уильям Хэброн. 18-летний житель Лондона был задержан по обвинению в убийстве полицейского. Как и во многих других таких случаях, разбирательство было недолгим. Суд посчитал представленные доказательства достаточным для того, чтобы приговорить юношу к казни через повешение. Спасло его то, что по закону предать смерти можно было лишь начиная с 19-летнего возраста. Хэброну оставалось жить пару месяцев. За это время стали известны новые обстоятельства дела, которые позволили адвокатам обжаловать приговор: смертную казнь заменили на пожизненное заключение.
В качестве компенсации Хэброну выплатили 800 фунтов
В спустя ещё пару лет, в 1879 в убийстве полицейского сознался другой человек — рецидивист Чарльз Пис. Пройдя через два обвинительных приговора, камеру смертников и тюрьму для осуждённых на пожизненное заключение, Хэброн получил право выйти на свободу.
Самым известным российским смертником, чей приговор был впоследствии отменён, стал житель города Шахты Ростовской области Александр Кравченко. Он был задержан в декабре 1978 г. по подозрению в жестоком убийстве и изнасиловании 9-летней школьницы. Положение фигуранта дела осложнялось тем, что он уже отсидел срок за сексуальное насилие и убийство десятилетней девочки. У Кравченко было алиби, поэтому сначала отпустили, но спустя пару месяцев он опять оказался в руках милиции — по обвинению в краже. В ходе допросов он признал свою вину и взял на себя ответственность ещё и за нашумевшее убийство. 16 августа 1979 г. Ростовский областной суд приговорил Кравченко к смертной казни. Осуждённый подал жалобу, заявил, что оговорил себя под давлением, дело было направлено на пересмотр. Сначала наказание смягчили — до 15-летнего срока заключения.
Казни Кравченко добились родственники погибшей девочки
В марте 1982 г. дело было пересмотрено в третий раз, Кравченко снова приговорили к смерти и на следующий год расстреляли.
Впоследствии убийство 1978 г. оказалось в одном ряду с преступлениями серийного маньяка Андрея Чикатило, жертвами которого, по данным следствия, стали более 50 человек. В ходе разбирательства «ростовский потрошитель» неоднократно менял показания, но был осуждён по всем статьям и казнён. В 1991 году на основании одного из решений по делу Чикатило Кравченко был оправдан. Впрочем, вскоре невиновным в убийстве второклассницы признали и самого маньяка, так что вопрос о том, кто на самом деле совершил это преступление остаётся открытым.
This is a list of miscarriage of justice cases. This list includes cases where a convicted individual was later cleared of the crime and either has received an official exoneration, or a consensus exists that the individual was unjustly punished or where a conviction has been quashed and no retrial has taken place, so that the accused is legally assumed innocent. This list is not exhaustive. Crime descriptions with an asterisk indicate that the events were later determined not to be criminal acts.
List of cases[edit]
Argentina[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 25, 2005 | Fernando Ariel Carrera | Aggravated manslaughter and robbery | Buenos Aires | 30 years | 6 years | Yes |
| Fernando Ariel Carrera was wrongly suspected by police of carrying out a robbery in January 2005 (Masacre de Pompeya (es)). He was stopped by police while driving, and as the officers failed to identify themselves as police, he panicked and tried to escape. The police then shot at his car as he escaped, and he was hit eight times. While unconscious, his car continued driving for 200 meters and fatally ran down two women and a child. Carrera was taken to hospital in serious condition and survived. He was subsequently put on trial, and in June 2007 was convicted of robbery and aggravated manslaughter. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was subsequently reduced to 15 years. Irregularities were found in his case. He was released on a court order in 2013, though without being declared innocent. The Supreme Court of Argentina officially exonerated him in October 2016.[1] |
Armenia[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 8, 1998 | Poghosyan | Rape and murder | Saratovka, Armenia | 15 years in prison | 5 years, 6 months | Yes |
| Poghosyan was arrested in 1998 on suspicion of rape and murder. He and his brother were subjected to physical violence by the police (beating, punching, kicking, blows to the ears causing a broken eardrum, forced to sit on a bottle) to force a confession from Poghosyan. The Lori Regional Court convicted Poghosyan of rape and murder in 1999. In 2003 following another offense, the real culprit was found, it became clear that the evidence against Poghosyan had been fabricated by the police and Poghosyan was freed. Two police officers were convicted of ill-treating the prisoners and fabricating evidence.[2][3] |
Australia[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 30, 1921 | Colin Campbell Ross | Rape and murder by strangulation of Alma Tirtschke | Little Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia | Execution | Executed | Yes, posthumously exonerated |
| Twelve-year-old Nell Alma Tirtschke left home on an errand for her grandmother. Early the next morning, her body was found in Gun Alley. She had been raped and strangled. Ross was convicted on the basis of several witnesses who testified that Ross confessed to them as well several strands of blonde hair on a blanket at Ross’s house. In 1993, a former school teacher named Kevin Morgan began researching Ross’s case. Morgan found a file in the Office of Public Prosecutions containing the original hair samples, which had been thought lost. In 1998, two independent scientific authorities—the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and the forensics division of the Australian Federal Police—found that the two lots of hair did not come from the same person, thereby disproving with certainty the most damning piece of evidence presented at Colin Ross’s trial. Colin Ross was pardoned on May 27, 2008, 86 years after his execution.[4][5] | ||||||
| December 20, 1959 | Darryl Beamish | Murder of 22-year-old socialite Jillian MacPherson Brewer | Perth, Australia | Death | 15 years | Yes |
| Brewer was the great-granddaughter of industrialist and philanthropist Sir Macpherson Robertson and was heir to MacRobertson’s chocolates. Brewer was killed by an intruder with a tomahawk and scissors in her beachside apartment. Beamish, who is deaf and mute, lived near Brewer. He signed a confession, which he claimed he signed under duress. It was later determined that Brewer’s murder was likely committed by Perth serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke, who confessed to the murder prior to his execution. Another man, John Button, was also convicted of murders assumed to have been committed by Cooke.[6] | ||||||
| February 9, 1963 | John Button | Murder of his 17-year-old girlfriend Rosemary Anderson | Fremantle, Western Australia | 10 years | 5 years | Yes |
| Nineteen-year-old Button and his girlfriend Rosemary Anderson were celebrating his birthday at his parents’ house. After an argument, Anderson decided to walk home. Button followed her in his car but she refused to get in and continued walking. Button stopped to smoke a cigarette before driving on. He found her lying injured and unconscious on the side of the road. She died later at the hospital.[7]: p 42 Button had a bad stutter and police interpreted this as being nervous due to the questions he was being asked. Button was refused access to his parents or a lawyer and was hit once by an interviewing police officer,[7]: p 49 before finally confessing to killing Anderson after 22 hours of interrogation. Damage to Button’s car was also introduced at trial. He was charged with wilful murder and served five years in prison.
In 1963, Perth serial killer, Eric Edgar Cooke, confessed to the murder of Anderson when arrested in 1963 and again before he was executed. At his appeal, Trevor Condron, the police officer who had examined John Button’s car in 1963 told the appeals court that while the car was damaged, the damage was not consistent with hitting a person and that three weeks before Anderson’s death, Button had reported to police another accident. This accident report had been known to police at the original trial but been discounted as irrelevant. The court also heard from Dr Neil Turner, who had treated Anderson. He claimed that her injuries were not consistent with Button’s vehicle. The world’s leading pedestrian accident expert, American William «Rusty» Haight, was flown to Australia and testified that experiments with a biomedical human-form dummy, a similar Simca to Button’s and an EJ Holden similar to the one Cooke claimed he was driving when he hit Anderson, matched exactly Cooke’s account and excluded the Simca.[8][9] In February 2002, the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed Button’s conviction.[10][11] Button now spearheads the Western Australian Innocence Project, which aims to free the wrongfully convicted.[12] |
||||||
| September 14, 1964 | Alexander McLeod-Lindsay | Attempted murder of his wife, Pamela Parsons | Sylvania, New South Wales. | 18 years | 9 years | Yes |
| McLeod-Lindsay returned from work to find his wife Pamela and son Bruce severely beaten. Police developed the theory that he had slipped away from the hotel, attacked his family and returned to work, unnoticed. Blood on McLeod-Lindsay’s jacket was said to have been «impact splatter», and deposited during the attack.[13]
Both victims survived the attack. Pamela McLeod-Lindsay was adamant that her husband had not attacked her. She said that the attacker had an Australian accent. McLeod-Lindsay’s accent was Scottish. McLeod-Lindsay was charged anyway with the attempted murder of his wife and son. The prosecution contended that Pamela McLeod-Lindsay was lying to protect the family’s income. McLeod-Lindsay was found guilty. McLeod-Lindsay was exonerated after a further review by another blood spatter pattern expert determined that the pattern was likely caused by transfer when he cradled his wife rather than by blows.[14] |
||||||
| December 3, 1977 | Edward Splatt | Murder and sexual assault of 77-year-old Rosa Simper | Cheltenham, South Australia | Life imprisonment | 7 years | No |
| Splatt spent seven years in jail for the murder of Rosa Simper but a Royal Commission led to a pardon and compensation of $300,000 in 1984. The commission found that forensic evidence was unreliable and that some contamination of the crime scene had possibly occurred.[15] | ||||||
| June 4, 1979 | David Szach | Murder of 44-year-old partner Derrance Stevenson | Parkside, South Australia | Life imprisonment | 14 years | No |
| [16] | ||||||
| August 17, 1980 | Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton | Murder of her daughter, Azaria* | Uluru, Northern Territory of Australia | Life imprisonment | 3 years | Yes |
| Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton was convicted in 1982 for the murder of her nine-week-old daughter, Azaria, after claiming that the baby had been taken by a dingo. In 1986, a British tourist fell to his death in Uluru while hiking. During the search for his remains, Azaria’s missing matinee jacket was discovered in an area full of dingo lairs.[17] The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory ordered Lindy Chamberlain’s immediate release and the case was reopened. On September 15, 1988, the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously overturned all convictions against Lindy and her husband, Michael Chamberlain, who had been convicted of accessory after the fact.[18][19][20][21] | ||||||
| June 22, 1982 | Ray, Peter and Brian Mickelberg | Robbery (the Perth Mint Swindle) | Perth, Western Australia | 20, 16 and 12 years in prison, respectively. | Varied | Yes |
| Ray, Peter, and Brian Mickelberg were convicted in 1983 of the Perth Mint Swindle. In 2002, Tony Lewandowski came forward and admitted the police had framed the brothers. In July 2004 their convictions were quashed and as part of a libel settlement, the West Australian police issued a public apology in December 2007. They were given A$500,000 each and $658,672 to cover legal fees.[22][23] | ||||||
| 1984 | Kevin Condren | Murder | Goodna, Queensland | Life imprisonment | Six years | Yes |
| Condren was an aboriginal Australian who was convicted on the basis of his alleged confession, which he said was based on police coercion and fabrication. Three new witnesses who did not testify at his trial came forward. Based on their testimony and serious doubts about the validity of Condren’s confession, the Court of Appeal reversed his conviction in 1990. He was awarded A$400,000 in 1991.[24] | ||||||
| January 10, 1989 | David Eastman | Assassination of Police Commissioner Colin Winchester | Canberra, Australian Capital Territory | Life imprisonment | 19 years | Yes |
| Eastman was found guilty after a trial by jury in 1995. After 19 years in gaol a judicial inquiry determined that Eastman was the victim of a miscarriage of justice; his conviction was quashed on August 22, 2014, and he was released. He was tried a second time and, on November 22, 2018, found not guilty. | ||||||
| September 1991 | Graham Stafford | Murder of Leanne Sarah Holland | Queensland | Life imprisonment | 14 years | Yes |
| The conviction of Stafford was based on forensic evidence that was undermined in subsequent appeals, including an unprecedented third appeal.[25] The Court of Appeal held he had been denied a fair trial and ordered a retrial;[26] However, the Director of Public Prosecutions subsequently decided a new trial would not be in the public interest.[25] | ||||||
| March 18, 1994 | Henry Keogh | Murder of his fiancée, Anna-Jane Cheney | Magill, South Australia | 26 years | 21 years | No |
| The evidence used in Keogh’s trial was scanty and obscure, and it was later revealed that police withheld vital information from his defence team. His conviction was quashed,[27] and while a retrial was initially pursued,[28] it was subsequently abandoned. The police uncovered evidence pointing to convicted murderer Simon Rochford but Rochford committed suicide in his prison cell in 2006. | ||||||
| May 23, 1994 | Andrew Mallard | Murder of Pamela Lawrence | Perth, Western Australia | 11 years | Yes | |
| Andrew Mallard was convicted for the murder of jeweller Pamela Lawrence in 1994 after eight unrecorded hours of police interrogation and a brief recorded «confession» that followed. In 2005, the High Court of Australia was advised that the prosecution and/or police had withheld evidence that showed his innocence, and overturned his conviction.[29] Mallard was released from prison. A «cold case» review of the murder conducted after Mallard’s release implicated Simon Rochford as the actual offender, and Mallard was exonerated. | ||||||
| December 1996 and February 1997 | George Pell | Child sexual abuse | St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia | 6 years | 1 year, 40 days | Yes |
| In a much-publicized case, Pell, a cardinal of the Catholic Church and high-ranking official of the Roman Curia, was found guilty on December 11, 2018, on five charges related to sexual assault of two 13-year-old boys while Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s and was sentenced to six years in prison.[30][31] In August 2019, an appeal against his conviction was dismissed by a majority of two-to-one in the Victorian Court of Appeal.[32] The High Court of Australia ultimately quashed Pell’s convictions and substituted verdicts of acquittal on April 7, 2020, in a unanimous decision. In the Court’s summary of its judgment, the justices wrote that there was «a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof».[33][34][35][36] |
Brazil[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 – 2011 | Jorge Luiz Thais Martins | Murders of nine drug addicts | Curitiba | 5 years | Yes | |
| A former colonel in the Military Firefighters Corps, Thais was arrested for the murders after several witnesses mistakenly identified him as the killer and that he supposedly wanted to avenge the murder of his son, who was killed during a botched robbery in 2009. He was acquitted and formally exonerated in 2016, when members of a death squad formed by five Military Police officers was linked to the murders. Thais successfully sued the state of Paraná in 2019 and compensated with 50,000 reais.[37] |
Canada[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 9, 1959 | Steven Truscott | Rape and murder of classmate Lynne Harper | Vanastra, Ontario | Death, then Life in Prison | 10 years | Yes |
| Steven Truscott’s wrongful conviction of murder in the death of Lynne Harper stood for 48 years before finally being overturned on August 28, 2007. | ||||||
| December 14, 1961 | Réjean Hinse | Armed robbery of a general store | Mont-Laurier, Quebec | 15 years | 8 years | Yes |
| Claimed he was 200 km away in Montreal at the time of the robbery. The Quebec Police Commission concluded in 1989 that Hinse was the victim of «a botched investigation». Acquitted by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1997 and paid C$13.1 million by the Quebec and Federal Governments—the largest wrongful conviction award in Canadian history. | ||||||
| August 9, 1967 | Roméo Phillion | Murder of Léopold Roy | Ottawa, Ontario | Life in prison | 31 years | Yes |
| Murder of veteran of fire department Léopold Roy[38] Phillion died in 2015 at the age of 76 before his $14 million lawsuit against the Ontario government had been settled. The longest ever sentence served by a Canadian prisoner whose conviction was later overturned. | ||||||
| January 31, 1969 | David Milgaard | Murder of 20-year-old nursing student, Gail Miller | Saskatoon, Saskatchewan | Life in Prison | 23 years | Yes |
| In 1969, 16-year-old David Milgaard was convicted and given a life sentence for the murder of 20-year-old nursing aide Gail Miller. After 23 years of imprisonment, the Supreme Court of Canada allowed for the release of Milgaard. In 1997 Milgaard, received an apology from the Saskatchewan government after DNA tests in the U.K. excluded him.[citation needed] | ||||||
| May 28, 1971 | Donald Marshall Jr. | Murder of Sandy Seale | Sydney, Nova Scotia | Life imprisonment | 11 years | Yes |
| Donald Marshall and Sandy Seale, then both 17 years old, had been walking around Wentworth Park in Sydney, Nova Scotia during the late evening with the intent to «roll a drunk» as stated at Marshall’s trial. They confronted an older man they encountered in the park named Roy Ebsary. Seale was stabbed to death. Police speculated that Marshall had murdered Seale and he was convicted on the basis of witness statements.[39][40] Several years later, a witness came forward to say he had seen another man stab Seale, and several prior witness statements pinpointing Marshall were recanted. A year after the appeal, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal declared him not guilty of the murder. In its ruling, however, the court opined that Marshall was «the author of his own misfortune», essentially blaming him for the conviction.[41][42][43][44] A 1990 royal commission of inquiry criticized that finding as «a serious and fundamental error», blaming police incompetence and «systemic racism» for the conviction (Marshall is Mi’kmaq). His case led to widespread changes in Canada’s evidence disclosure rules. Prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defence in the Marshall case; the prosecution must now fully disclose to the defence any evidence it has in its possession. Ebsary was subsequently tried and convicted of manslaughter.[39] | ||||||
| December 23, 1981 | Thomas Sophonow | Murder of 16-year-old Barbara Stoppel | 4 years | Yes | ||
| Stoppel was working at the Ideal Donut Shop in Winnipeg when she was found strangled in the restroom with a nylon cord. She died five days later. Witnesses gave police a description of a man wearing a cowboy hat enter the establishment, lock the door, and walk towards the back. Sophonow, who had a police record, bore a resemblance to the sketch. He was convicted on the basis of the eyewitness identification and a jailhouse informant who testified that Sophonow confessed to him. Sophonow was tried three times. The first ended in a mistrial, the second two in convictions. Both convictions were overturned and the court of appeal ordered an acquittal. The Winnipeg police service began a reinvestigation and in June 2000, they publicly announced that Sophonow was innocent and another suspect had been identified. In 2001, Justice Peter Cory concluded that police misconduct contributed to the wrongful conviction. The use of jailhouse informants and misuse and manipulation of eyewitness accounts was criticized.[45] | ||||||
| October 3, 1984 | Guy Paul Morin | Rape and murder of his 9-year-old neighbour, Christine Jessop | Queensville, Ontario | Life in prison | 3 years | Yes |
| Jessop disappeared after being dropped off by the school bus at her home.[46] Her body was discovered on December 31, nearly three months later. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered.[47] Morin was arrested for Jessop’s murder in April 1985 and was acquitted.[47][48] The Crown exercised its right to appeal the verdict on the grounds that the trial judge made a fundamental error prejudicing the Crown’s right to a fair trial.[49] In 1987 the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial.[50] In 1992, Morin was convicted at his second trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment.[51] Improvements in DNA testing led to a test in 1995 that excluded Morin as the murderer.[52] Morin’s appeal of his conviction was allowed (i.e., the conviction was reversed), and a directed verdict of acquittal entered in the appeal.[50] An inquiry culminating in the Kaufman Report into Morin’s case also uncovered evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct, and of misrepresentation of forensic evidence by the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences.[50][53] The identity of Christine Jessop’s murderer was announced in October 2020—Calvin Hoover, who had died in 2015.[54][55] | ||||||
| June 19, 1990 | Robert Baltovich | Murder of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Bain | Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. | Life | 11 years | Yes |
| Robert Baltovich was convicted in 1992 of the murder of Elizabeth Bain; released in 2000 to prepare an appeal based on new evidence. The Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a new trial, which began in March 2008. At the outset of the trial, the Crown declined to call any evidence, and the judge ordered the jury to bring a verdict of not guilty. Circumstantial evidence pointed to the serial killer Paul Bernardo, an acquaintance of Bain’s, as the murderer. The Ontario Attorney-General denied financial compensation to Baltovich in 2010. | ||||||
| September 1990 | James Driskell | Murder of Perry Harder | Winnipeg, Manitoba | Life in prison | 12 years | No |
| Harder was murdered by being shot several times in the chest and buried in a shallow grave near some railroad tracks. Police suspected Driskell of the murders because Harder implicated Driskell in a series of break-ins. The prosecution presented three hairs from Driskell’s van that they argued belonged to Harder. A later review by the Forensic Science Services in England determined that none of the hairs belonged to Harder. It was later discovered that a key police witness, Ray Zanidean, tried to recant his testimony. In exchange for his testimony, police made a deal with Zanidean that he would not be charged in an arson case. He also received payment for his legal fees and received money for mortgage payments that were in arrears. He also received $20,000 payment. This information was not disclosed to the jury. Although he has not been formally exonerated, he was released on November 24, 2003.[56] | ||||||
| October 9, 1993 | Tammy Marquardt | Murder of her son, Kenneth | Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Life in prison | 14 | Yes |
| Tammy was home with her 2+1⁄2-year-old son Kenneth, who was napping in their spare bedroom. When she checked on him, she found him tangled in the sheets and gasping for breath. Kenneth suffered irreparable brain damage and was taken off life support three days later. Dr. Charles Smith, who was considered to be the leading expert in Canada on criminally suspicious pediatric deaths, was consulted on the case. Smith concluded that Kenneth’s death was not accidental. Tammy’s defence insisted her son died from complications of an epileptic seizure. She was convicted. Smith’s work subsequently came into question on a number of cases. On June 7, 2005, Chief Coroner for Ontario, Dr. Barry McLellan, announced that a formal review would be conducted of criminal cases for which Smith had performed the autopsy. In October 2007, another forensic pathologist assigned to the case concluded that Smith’s finding of asphyxia was «illogical and completely against scientific evidence-based reasoning». In 2011, the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed Marquadt’s conviction and the Crown withdrew the charges against her. Experts hired by the prosecution agreed that Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) could not be ruled out as the cause of death in Kenneth’s case as well as other natural cases of death.[57][58] | ||||||
| September 21, 1994 | William Mullins-Johnson | Murder of his 4-year-old niece Valin | Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada | Life in prison | 12 | Yes |
China[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Teng Xingshan | Rape, robbery and murder | Hunan, China | Death sentence | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Teng Xingshan, a butcher, was convicted (the court was told «Teng confessed his crime on his initiative and his confession conforms with scientific inspection and identification») and executed in 1989 for the murder of Shi Xiaorong, a waitress who had disappeared. Shi reappeared in Shandong in 1993 and said she had never met Teng. Teng was posthumously acquitted in 2006.[59][60] | ||||||
| 1993 | Zhang Yuhuan | Murder | Jinxian, Jiangxi province | Death sentence, commuted to life imprisonment | 27 years | Yes |
| Zhang Yuhuan maintained he was tortured by police and forced to confess to the murder of two young boys in 1993. In March 2019 the high court agreed to retry the case and in July provincial prosecutors recommended Mr Zhang be acquitted based on insufficient evidence. He walked free in August 2020. The killer of the two boys in 1993 remains unknown.[61] | ||||||
| 1995 | Nie Shubin | Rape and murder | Zhang Ying village, Hubei province | Death sentence | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Nie Shubin was convicted after the police had obtained a confession from him with a week of «skillful interrogation, including psychological warfare» and executed in 1995 for the rape and murder of Kang Juhua, a woman in her thirties. In 2005, Wang Shujin admitted to the police that he had committed the murder and described murder scene details only known to the police.[62][63] | ||||||
| 1996 | Huugjilt | Rape and murder | Inner Mongolia | Death sentence | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| A young Chinese national executed for the rape and murder of some young people. Unable to find the offender, the local police arrested Huugjilt instead, who was the first to discover and report the case, and obtained his testimony by torture.[64] He was declared innocent after the real culprit, Zhao Zhihong (赵志红), who was executed in 2015, admitted the crime. Huugjilt’s family was compensated 2.05 million yuan (equivalent to US$298,000) by Inner Mongolia High People’s Court.[65][66][67] | ||||||
| 2001 | Chen Keyun | Bombing that killed one person | Fuqing, China | Death sentence (twice) | 12 years | Yes |
| Chen (and five others) was arrested by the police after a bomb went off outside a government office that investigates officials for corruption as Chen had previously been investigated by the office. Chen was tortured by beating, starvation, dangling by his wrists from bars on a high window and deprivation of sleep and signed a forced confession. The others were also tortured. Chen was convicted and sentenced to death and the others got prison sentences. After several appeals in 2013 the Fuzhou provincial court acquitted Chen and the others and offered to pay 4.2 million Yuan (about $690,000).[68] |
Finland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Anneli Auer | Murder | Ulvila | Life imprisonment | 1.6 years | Yes |
| In December 2006, Jukka S. Lahti was murdered in what became known as the Ulvila homicide case. His wife, Anneli Auer, was arrested for his murder in 2009. She was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to life imprisonment. An appeals court overturned her conviction. In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered the case retried after prosecutors presented new evidence. In December 2013, she was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for a second time. An appeals court again overturned the verdict. Prosecutors appealed the acquittal to the Supreme Court, which upheld the acquittal. She was granted €545,000 in compensation, and filed an unsuccessful claim for €2.5 million in compensation.[69][70] |
France[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1431 | Joan of Arc | Heresy and cross-dressing | Rouen, France | Death sentence, burning at stake | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Joan of Arc was executed in 1431 on charges of heresy. She was posthumously cleared in 1456. | ||||||
| October 14, 1761 | Jean Calas | Murder of his son, Marc-Antoine | Toulouse, France | Death sentence, breaking wheel | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Jean Calas from Toulouse was executed on March 10, 1762, for murder of his son Marc Antoine. The philosopher Voltaire, convinced of his innocence, succeeded in reopening of the case and rehabilitation of Jean in 1765. | ||||||
| 1894 | Alfred Dreyfus | Treason | Life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana | Yes | ||
| Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly convicted for treason in 1894. After being imprisoned on Devil’s Island, he was proven innocent with the assistance of Émile Zola and definitively rehabilitated only in 1906. See the Dreyfus affair. | ||||||
| April 30, 1987 | Patrick Dils | Murder of two children, Cyril Beining and Alexandre Beckrich | Montigny-lès-Metz, France | Life imprisonment | 15 years | Yes |
| Dils conviction was overturned and he was acquitted on retrial in 2002. | ||||||
| 2001 | 17 persons | Child abuse | Imprisonment | Yes | ||
| In 2005, thirteen people were finally proven innocent of child molestation after having served four years in prison. A fourteenth died in prison. Only four people were proven guilty. This infamous case, which deeply shook public opinion, is known as the Affaire d’Outreau, the Outreau case, from the name of the city where the victims lived. | ||||||
| December 2001 | Marc Machin | Murder | Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris | Imprisonment | 11 years | Yes |
| In 2001, 45-year-old Marie-Agnès Bedot was murdered by stabbing. Nineteen-year-old Marc Machin was convicted of the murder based on circumstantial evidence and a forced confession. In 2008 David Sagno, a homeless man, admitted murdering Bedot and the police found Sagno’s DNA on Bedot’s clothes. Machin’s conviction was quashed and he was cleared in 2012.[71] |
Germany[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 13, 2001 | Hermine Rupp, her two daughters, and her daughter’s fiancé | Murder of Rudolf Rupp, husband of Hermine Rupp | Neuburg an der Donau (Bavaria, Germany) | 8+1⁄2 years | 5 years | |
| Rudolf Rupp disappeared on his way back from the local pub one night in October 2001. Local rumors spread that the Rupp family killed the unlikeable Rudy, who had a history of drinking excessively and fighting. Police had no evidence in the case, but eventually coerced confessions from the family that they had bludgeoned him, dismembered him, and fed him to the dogs. No physical evidence was found, but they were convicted based on confessions that even contradicted each other. In 2009, Rupp’s body was found behind the wheel of his Mercedes in the Danube river in an apparent car accident. Though the corpse suffered by fish feeding on it, there was no evidence of a crime.[72] | ||||||
| August 28, 2001 | Horst Arnold case | Rape | Reichelsheim, Germany | 5 years | 5 years | July 5, 2011 |
| Horst Arnold was a sports and biology teacher at the August Zinn comprehensive school in Reichelsheim. He was accused by a female colleague, Heidi K., of having raped her, and based on her testimony he was sentenced to five years of prison. Only after he was freed, an equal opportunity commissioner (who, at first, supported Heidi K. before and during the trial) noticed several contradictions in her stories. In prison, Arnold continued to deny the crime and refused therapy sessions, which was why he was denied early leave on parole. In the retrial, Arnold was exonerated, and in 2013, Heidi K. was sentenced to five years and six months. |
Greece[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 399 BC | Socrates | Corrupting the youth of Athens and impiety | Athens, Greece | Death sentence, drinking poison hemlock | Executed | No |
| Modern interpretations state this his conviction and sentence were instead revenge for his affiliation with the dictatorial Thirty Tyrants. | ||||||
| 1922 (AD) | D. Gounaris, G. Baltatzis, N. Stratos, N. Theotokis and P. Protopapadakis (Trial of the Six) | High Treason | Athens, Greece | Death sentence | Executed | Executed the day of the sentence |
| In 2010, Greek courts reversed the convictions for high treason of the six. |
Iceland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Sævar Ciesielski, Kristjan Vídar Vídarsson, Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson, Albert Klahn Skaftason, Guðjón Skarphéðinsson and Erla Bolladóttir | Murder of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur | Hafnarfjörður and Keflavik, near Reykjavik Iceland | Two life sentences; the other four got 15 months to 16 years (sentences reduced in 1980) | All served their time in jail | Yes[73] |
| Two men, Guðmundur and Geirfinnur, disappeared in January and November 1974. The Icelandic police were convinced that the six suspects were complicit in the murder of these two men although there were no bodies, witnesses or forensic evidence. The police subjected the suspects to intense and lengthy interrogations (including two that had over 600 days in solitary confinement, water torture, sleep deprivation and drugs).[74] Most Icelanders believed the six were innocent. The BBC described this as «… one of the most shocking miscarriages of justice Europe has ever witnessed.» |
Iran[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Atefah Sahaaleh | Adultery and «crimes against chastity» | Neka, Iran | Death by hanging | Executed | Yes, posthumously[citation needed] |
| Sahaaleh was convicted for «crimes against chastity» for being involved in a sexual relationship with a 51-year-old married man named Ali Darabi. Sahaaleh claimed she was raped by Darabi multiple times over the course of 3 years and then tortured into confessing. During her trial, she removed her hijab, an act seen as severe contempt of court, and argued that Darabi should be punished, not her. The judge sentenced her to death. Darabi was sentenced to 95 lashes.[75]
Unbeknownst to her parents, documents presented to the Supreme Court of Appeal described her as 22 years old. Her birth certificate indicated her age was 16. Amnesty International and other organizations declared her execution to be a crime against humanity and against children of the world.[76] |
Ireland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1882 | Maolra Seoighe | Murder | Maamtrasna, Ireland | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Joyce was one of three people condemned to death for the murder of a local family in Ireland, which was part of the United Kingdom at the time. Joyce spoke no English, his lawyer spoke no Irish, perjured witnesses were bribed, evidence withheld and most scholars have regarded the verdict as a miscarriage of justice. In 2018 the President of Ireland issued a pardon and said «Maolra Seoighe was wrongly convicted of murder and was hanged for a crime that he did not commit.»[77] | ||||||
| January 8, 1990 | Nora Wall | Rape | Dublin | Life | 4 days | Yes |
| Wall was convicted on the basis of false allegations by Regina Walsh (psychiatric history) and Patricia Phelan (history of false accusations). The first woman in the history of the Irish State to be convicted of rape, the first person to receive a life sentence for rape and the only person in the history of the state to be convicted on repressed memory evidence. | ||||||
| March 31, 1976 | Sallins Train Robbery four | Mail train robbery | Sallins, County Kildare | 9 to 12 years | 4 years | Yes |
| Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly, Brian Mcnally, Michael Plunkett, John Fitzpatrick were arrested and beaten by the Garda Síochána to extract confessions under duress from four (Plunkett did not sign). The four were found guilty with no other evidence apart from the confessions. Breatnach and McNally were acquitted on appeal on the grounds that their statements had been taken under duress. Kelly was given a presidential pardon and received £750,000 in compensation. |
Israel[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1948 | Meir Tobianski | Treason | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously | |
| In June 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Meir Tobianski, a major in the Israeli army, was arrested on charges of spying for the Jordanians. The Chief Military Prosecutor’s order to detain and interrogate Tobianski for 10 days was ignored; instead, he was subjected to a drumhead court-martial. He was found guilty on circumstantial evidence, sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad on June 30, 1948. Later, an investigation resulted in Tobianski’s posthumous acquittal. Intelligence chief Isser Be’eri, who was largely responsible for Tobianski’s execution, was later put on trial and found guilty of manslaughter. | ||||||
| 1974 | Amos Baranes | Murder | Haifa District, between Caesarea and Or Akiva | Life imprisonment | 8+1⁄2 years | Yes |
| In January 1976, Amos Baranes was convicted for the 1974 murder of soldier Rachel Heller and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He had approached the police and told them he had known the victim, intending to offer his help any way he could, but he then became a suspect and was arrested. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. His conviction was based solely on a confession and reenaction he provided to police, which he later retracted, claiming that the police had extracted the confession out of him by physically abusing him and depriving him of sleep for four days. An appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court was rejected, although errors in the investigation were acknowledged.
In 1980, Ezra Goldberg, a retired policeman concluded that Baranes was innocent. He gave the information to Judge Haim Cohn, one of the Supreme Court judges who had rejected his appeal. Cohn concluded that his judgement had been wrong, and suggested Baranes ask for a pardon. Baranes refused, claiming that such a request would be an admission of a crime he did not commit. Cohn then asked President Chaim Herzog to grant Baranes a pardon. Baranes was finally released in June 1983 after receiving a presidential pardon. He had served 8+1⁄2 years of his sentence. Following his release, Baranes continued his struggle to clear his name. Three times his requests for a new trial were denied. In March 2002, Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner finally ruled that Baranes should get a new trial. Four weeks later, Judge Cohn died. His last phone conversation was with Justice Dorner; he called her from his sickbed and thanked her for fixing the injustice «that I did». Baranes was one of the people who carried Cohn’s coffin at his funeral. In December 2002, the court acquitted Baranes—without hearing evidence and without deciding whether Baranes committed the crime after the prosecution decided not to have a trial. In 2003, Baranes was awarded NIS1.4 million in compensation. On August 5, 2010, he was awarded a further NIS5,029,000 in compensation. Amos Baranes died in September 2011. A suspect in the murder of Rachel Heller was arrested in 2019. |
||||||
| Late 1970s | Azat Naffso | Treason and espionage | Kfar Shuba | 18 years’ imprisonment | 7 years | |
| In 1980, Azat Naffso, a former military intelligence officer of Circassian origin, was arrested for espionage, after it was discovered that one of his contacts in Lebanon had been a double agent for Fatah. Naffso was interrogated and subjected to various forms of torture to extract a confession. After 14 days, Naffso confessed, and was tried before a military court in 1981, convicted, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 1987, he appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that his confession had been extracted illegally and that the prosecution had presented fabricated evidence. The Supreme Court judges cleared Naffso of most of the charges and sharply criticized Naffso’s interrogators, accused them of perjury, and of not taking reasonable measures during his interrogation. A plea bargain was reached, under which Naffso agreed to plead guilty to exceeding authority creating a national security risk. Naffso’s sentence was reduced to 2 years and a demotion to the rank of Sergeant, and as a result, he was released immediately. The Naffso affair was one of the reasons the Landau Commission, set up to investigate methods used by Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, was set up. Naffso subsequently filed a compensation claim against the state, and reached a compromise under which he would be given $1 million in compensation and pledge not to publicly reveal details of the case. | ||||||
| c. 1991 – c. 1994 | Arnoldo Lazorovsky | Sodomy against a minor and committing an indecent act | Sharon region | 6 years | 6 years | Yes |
| In 2000, Arnoldo Lazorovsky was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor while working as a janitor at the Kfar Saba Country Club between 1991 and 1994, and was sentenced to six years in prison, after being accused by a young man several years after the alleged crimes occurred. Soon afterward, Gregory Schneider, who had worked at the same country club, was convicted of similar crimes after being accused by the same person, but the conviction was overturned upon appeal. As a result, Lazorovsky requested and was granted a retrial, but was convicted again, after which he appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which overturned the conviction.[78] | ||||||
| 1998 | Moshe Zagury | Murder, arson, and robbery | Life imprisonment | 5 years | Yes | |
| Moshe Zaguri was convicted of murdering money changer Ephraim Yass by the Haifa District Court in October 1998 after a state witness testified against him in exchange for having a narcotics charge dropped. He was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment and 3 years’ probation. An appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected, and the Supreme Court increased his sentence to life imprisonment. In 2004, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.[79][80] | ||||||
| 2002 | Elisha Haibatov | Murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit a crime | Negev region | Life imprisonment | 12 years | Yes |
| Elisha Haibatov was arrested in January 2006 for the 2002 murder of cashier Shai Edri in Sderot, who was killed in the course of a robbery. He was already serving a prison sentence for torching his own home and threatening his partner at the time. He was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2018, after he had served 12 years in prison, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his convictions for murder, robbery, and conspiracy to commit a crime, but upheld his convictions for witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and violating a legal order. His sentence was reduced to 3 years, and as a result he was released immediately.[81][82] | ||||||
| 2007 | Hamed Zinati | Murder | Life imprisonment | 4 years | Yes | |
| In 2007, Hamed Zinati, a Druze land broker from Abu Snan, was arrested for the murder of Youssef Ali, who had been married to a woman who had had an affair with one of his business partners. He was convicted on the basis of a confession that the police had extracted from a third suspect. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction on appeal after he spent four years in prison. The Supreme Court sharply criticized his conviction, ruling that the court’s reliance on a confession extracted under questionable circumstances was the blackest of moral stains on the Israeli justice system. He was awarded $100,000 in compensation.[83] |
Italy[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | Pietro Valpreda | Piazza Fontana bombing | Milan, near the Duomo di Milano | 4+1⁄2 years, for the charges of «subversive association», only (not directly for the bombing) | 3 years pre-trial (while awaiting legal proceedings) | Yes |
| Pietro Valpreda, an anarchist condemned for the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, was finally found innocent sixteen years later. He was framed since it was planned to blame the crime on the radical Left, while it was committed by Neo-Fascist groups as the first step of the strategy of tension. | ||||||
| 1976 | Giuseppe Gulotta | Two Carabinieri shot dead | Alcamo Marina, Trapani, Italy | Life | 22 years | Yes |
| Convicted for the killing of two Carabinieri, released when another Carabiniere revealed that the confession had been obtained through torture. | ||||||
| 1983 | Enzo Tortora | Drug trafficking; association with Camorra | 10 years | 7 months pre-trial + post-conviction house arrest of 8+1⁄2 months | Yes | |
| Enzo Tortora, a popular anchorman on national RAI television, was arrested in 1983 and held in jail for months on trumped-up charges by several pentiti of the Camorra and other people already known for perjury. It was soon noted that this was most likely a mis-identification due to confusion with a man having the same surname (meaning «turtledove»), but the pentiti kept on accusing Tortora of the gravest offenses related to drug dealing. He was sentenced to ten years in jail in his first trial held in 1985.
He was spared further incarceration at this time, due to intervention from the Radical Party which offered him a candidacy to the European Parliament (EP). Tortora won election in two constituencies, despite the country being divided between those who held him guilty and those who held him innocent. He resigned as an EP member in December 1985, renouncing his parliamentary immunity. Tortora was then placed under house arrest until he was completely acquitted and rehabilitated by the Court of Appeal in September 1986. He returned the next year to his work in TV, to a moving comeback in his «Portobello» show, to die in 1988 from cancer and become an icon of battles against injustice and a perpetual reminder of a grave public blunder of the Italian judiciary system. |
||||||
| 1992 | Daniele Barillà | Drug trafficking | Liguria | 18 years | 7+1⁄2 years | Yes |
| Daniele Barillà, an entrepreneur mistakenly identified as a major drug cartel boss in Milan, spent more than 7 years in jail from 1992 to 1999, despite growing evidence of his complete innocence and non-involvement in any criminal activity. He has been awarded €4,000,000 for unjust incarceration.[84] | ||||||
| February 14, 2004 | Fabio Carlino | Homicide resulting from the commission of another crime; illegal supply of drugs | Rimini | 4+1⁄2 years; fine; financial compensation to family of victim | Yes | |
| Fabio Carlino was convicted of selling the dose of ultra-pure cocaine that killed cyclist Marco Pantani, and sentenced to 4+1⁄2 years in prison. He was also ordered to pay a fine of £19,000, and another £300,000 in damages to Pantani’s family. His conviction was overturned by the Italian Court of Cassation in 2011.[85] | ||||||
| November 1, 2007 | Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito | Murder of Meredith Kercher | Perugia, Italy |
|
3 years | Yes |
| London-born Kercher was studying in Italy when she was found murdered in the home she shared with Knox. Knox, who was from Seattle, her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and Ivorian-born Rudy Guede were charged with the murder. Forensic evidence, including DNA from feces at the scene and fingerprints linked Guede to the scene, but the cases against Knox and Sollecito were controversial. Knox and Kercher were acquainted with Guede, but Knox and Sollecito claim they were at Sollecito’s house at the time of the murder. Prosecutors argued Kercher was killed as part of a sex game gone wrong.[86]
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Cassation overturned the previous guilty verdicts, definitively ending the case.[87][88][89][90] Rather than merely declaring that there were errors in the earlier court cases or that there was not enough evidence to convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito had not committed the murder and were innocent of those charges.[89][91] According to Vedova, the decision by the five judges was almost unprecedented. Guede’s conviction still stands.[90] |
Japan[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 30, 1948 | Sakae Menda | Double murder | Japan | Death | 35 years | Yes |
| Sakae Menda was convicted for a double murder in 1948, after police extracted a confession by denying him food, water, and sleep, and subjecting him to physical abuse. He was sentenced to death, and spent 35 years on death row before being cleared in 1983, after further evidence backing up his alibi came to light.[92] | ||||||
| 1997 | Govinda Prasad Mainali | Murder of a woman | Tokyo, Japan | Life | 15 years | Yes |
| In 1997 a Japanese female employee of Tokyo Electric Power Co. was murdered in her apartment in Tokyo. Maimali, a Nepalese migrant worker, knew the woman and lived nearby. The police arrested Maimali who was physically abused (beaten, kicked, head banged against the wall) by officers and was not allowed a lawyer. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. He appealed the conviction on the grounds that DNA evidence at the scene (semen, body hair, under the dead woman’s fingernails) were not his and was acquitted in 2012.[93][94] | ||||||
| 1990 | Toshikazu Sugaya | Four-year-old girl kidnapped and murdered (The Ashikaga murder case, part of the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case) | Kanto region, Japan | Life | 17 years | Yes |
| Sugaya was found guilty based on flawed DNA testing and a confession that he professes was beaten out of him by detective in charge of the case Fumio Hashimoto. Investigation by reporter Kiyoshi Shimizu into the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case resulted in the Ashikaga case being found to be part of it, with Sugaya being innocent. It was later found that the prosecution had also suppressed evidence regarding the true culprit, including eyewitness accounts, because they did not match their version of events with Sugaya as the culprit. |
Mexico[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 2006 | Jacinta Francisco Marcial | Kidnapping and ransom of Federal Investigations Agents | Santiago Mexquititlán, Querétaro | 21 years in prison | 3 years | |
| In March 2006, six plainclothes agents of Mexico’s Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) raided a market in Santiago Mexquititlán, Querétaro, in search of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. During the raid, the six AFI agents were cornered by a number of unarmed vendors in protest. The agents later claimed that the vendors demanded a ransom to let them go. Local witnesses to the incident denied any ransom demand was made. Jacinta Francisco Marcial, an indigenous Otomí woman, sold ice cream in Santiago Mexquititlán’s predominantly indigenous tianguis. The six AFI agents who conducted the raid implicated Francisco Marcial after they were shown a newspaper photograph depicting her walking near a group of protesting vendors. In August 2006, four months after the raid, she was arrested for the alleged kidnapping. She was later convicted and sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment. Two other women were convicted as well.
Amnesty International denounced Francisco Marcial’s imprisonment as resulting from a wrongful prosecution. The group declared her a prisoner of conscience, claiming there was no credible evidence against her, and that she had been prosecuted because of her gender, poverty, race, and inability to speak or understand the Spanish language. In 2009, prosecutors dropped the case against Francisco Marcial and she was released. The two other women convicted of the same charges, Alberta Alcántara and Teresa González, had their convictions reversed by the Mexican Supreme Court in April 2010 and were also released from prison.[95] |
Netherlands[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Ina Post | Murder and robbery | Netherlands | Life | 4 years | Yes |
| Post was a carer for an 89-year-old woman who was strangled and robbed. She «seemed nervous» when questioned and under forceful police questioning she confessed although later retracted. Post’s alibi was not verified, another nearby similar crime that Post could not have done was ignored and there was no corroborating evidence. She was released from prison in 1990. The Dutch Appeal Court acquitted Post in 2010 and the Dutch Prosecutor admitted he was wrong.[96] | ||||||
| 1994 | Wilco Viets, Herman Dubois | Murder | Putten | 10 years | 6 years | Yes |
| The Putten murder case (1994): in this case, the 23-year-old stewardess Christel Ambrosius was found murdered in her grandmother’s house, which was remotely located in the Veluwe. The police arrested four men who had been in those woods that weekend. Even though sperm found did not match the DNA of any of the four men, Wilco Viets and Herman Dubois were convicted to 10 years’ imprisonment anyway, of which they only served two-thirds for good behavior. In April 2002, the Dutch high council (Supreme court) declared both men innocent, shortly after they had completed their sentences. Another suspect was apprehended in May 2008, based on a DNA match.[97] | ||||||
| 22 June 2000 | Cees Borsboom | Child sexual abuse and murder, another attempted murder | Schiedam | 18 years, psychiatric treatment | 4 years | Partially |
| In 2000 Nienke Kleiss was murdered in the Beatrix park from Schiedam. The suspect called the police for finding a body. An under-age witness was abused during police interrogation in order to provide incriminating evidence. The suspect has falsely confessed to committing the crime, but has recanted such confession. He was sentenced in 2002 to 18 years’ imprisonment and mandatory psychiatric treatment. In 2004 it became apparent that Wik H. was the real culprit. DNA evidence also cleared Borsboom. His jail time was interrupted and eventually he was partially rehabilitated, though not declared innocent. As a result of the scandal, Commission Posthumus was created in order to review possible wrongful convictions.[98] | ||||||
| 2001 | Lucia de Berk | 7 murders | The Hague | life | 6+1⁄2 years | Yes |
| Lucia de Berk: was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 for four murders and three attempted murders of patients in her care. After an appeal, she was convicted in 2004 of seven murders and three attempts. In October 2008, the case was reopened by the Dutch supreme court, as new facts had been uncovered that undermined the previous verdicts. De Berk was freed, and her case was re-tried; she was exonerated in April 2010. |
New Zealand[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 17, 1970 (circa) | Arthur Allan Thomas | Murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe | Pukekawa, Waikato | Life imprisonment | 9 years | Yes—paid compensation |
| Arthur Allan Thomas, a New Zealand farmer, was twice convicted of the June 1970 murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe. He spent 9 years in prison but was given a Royal Pardon and was released and awarded $1 million compensation for wrongful convictions. A Royal Commission in 1980 found that the prosecution cases were flawed and that after firing Thomas’ impounded rifle, police had planted a cartridge case in the Crewes’ garden to incriminate him, and ignored evidence that pointed to another suspect. The prosecution had also denied alibi and witness information to the defence team.[99] | ||||||
| May 1, 1986 to October 1, 1992 | Peter Ellis | Sexual abuse of children at Christchurch Civic Creche | Christchurch | 10 years’ imprisonment | 7 years | Yes |
| Peter Ellis was convicted in 1993 on 16 counts of sexual offending involving children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Creche around the time of the day-care sex-abuse hysteria. After unsuccessful appeals and serving seven years of his ten year sentence, Ellis was released in February 2000, continuing to maintain his innocence. In 2019, he appealed to the Supreme Court to have his conviction overturned. Although he died of cancer before the appeal could be heard, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal in the interest of justice and delivered a judgment in October 2022. The Court quashed Ellis’ convictions. It found there were problems with the evidence of the main prosecution witness, a psychiatrist, and the jury had not been fairly informed of the risk of contamination of the children’s evidence.[100] | ||||||
| August 16, 1986 | Alan Hall | Murder of Arthur Easton | Papakura, Auckland | Life imprisonment | 19 years | Yes — compensation pending |
| Arthur Easton and his two sons were attacked in their home by an intruder carrying a bayonet. Easton was stabbed and bled to death. Police came across Alan Hall when door knocking in the neighbourhood two months later. He admitted owning a bayonet and a wollen beanie similar to items left at the crime scene. Hall was autistic and was subject to police interrogations without a lawyer for hours on end. When the case came to trial, the police withheld crucial evidence from the defence and falsified a written statement by one important witness. Hall was released on bail after nine years but recalled 16 years later after breaching a condition of his parole. He served another ten years. Altogether it took 36 years for his conviction to be overturned.[101] | ||||||
| March 23, 1992 | Teina Pora | Rape and murder of Susan Burdett | Papatoetoe, Auckland | Life imprisonment with 10 years non-parole | 21 years | Yes, paid $3.5 million in compensation |
| Burdett was raped and murdered in her own home. Pora, who was born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, was arrested on other charges about a year later and during an interview was told there was a $20,000 reward for information. Pora claimed he had acted as lookout for the offender. Later, he claimed he had been present in Burdett’s home. No direct evidence implicating him was presented at trial but he was convicted in 1994. Later, Malcolm Rewa was convicted on DNA evidence for a series of sex crimes, and his DNA matched that found at the Burdett scene. Pora’s conviction was quashed in March 2015. He was awarded $2.52 million compensation, later inflation-adjusted to $3.5 million. | ||||||
| October 1992 | David Dougherty | Abduction and rape of an 11-year-old girl | Auckland | 7 years 9 months’ imprisonment | 3 years | Yes—paid compensation |
| David Dougherty was convicted in 1993 on charges of abduction and the rape of an 11-year-old girl. After serving over three years in prison, he was acquitted in 1997 after new DNA evidence ruled him out. Compensation of over $800,000 was paid by the New Zealand Government and an apology given for the wrongful conviction. The real culprit, Nicholas Reekie, was later convicted of the crime.[102] | ||||||
| June 20, 1994 | David Bain | Murder of his parents and three siblings | Dunedin | Life imprisonment with 16 years non-parole | 13+1⁄2 years | Conviction overturned, paid $925,000 but Govt claimed it was not compensation |
| David Bain was convicted in 1995 of the murders of all five members of his family the previous year. The defence put forward the argument that David’s father, Robin Bain, killed the other members of his family and then himself while David was out on his morning paper run. David spent 13 years in prison proclaiming his innocence and was supported in his pursuit of justice by former All Black Joe Karam. Bain’s convictions were overturned in 2007 by the Privy Council, which found that a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred. He was awarded a retrial in 2009 and acquitted on all charges. | ||||||
| August 12, 1999 | Lucy Akatere, Tania Vini & McCushla Fuataha | Aggravated robbery of a 16-year-old girl | Three Kings, Auckland | 18 months, 18 months, and 24 months imprisonment (respectively) | 7 months | Yes—paid compensation |
| Akatere, Vini and Fuataha were convicted in 1999 regarding the group assault and robbery of a 16-year-old girl. The Court of Appeal quashed the convictions after two key witnesses retracted their testimony. Akatere, Vini and Fuataha received between $162,000 and $177,000 each in compensation.[103][104] | ||||||
| September 1, 2003 | Aaron Farmer | Rape of a 22-year-old woman | Sydenham, Christchurch | 8 years’ imprisonment | 2 years | Yes—paid compensation |
| Aaron Farmer was convicted in 2005 on charges of raping a 22-year-old woman. The Court of Appeal set aside the conviction and ordered a retrial in June 2007 after it was determined that alibi evidence had not been presented to the jury. Before the retrial took place, DNA evidence ruled out Farmer and the Crown withdrew the case. Farmer received $351,500 compensation and a public apology from the government for the wrongful conviction.[105] | ||||||
| November 12, 2003 | Phillip Johnston and Jaden Knight | Arson | Foxton, Manawatū-Whanganui | 6 years’ imprisonment | 9+1⁄2 months | Yes—paid compensation |
| Johnston and Knight were convicted of arson in September 2004 in relation to a fire at the Manawatu Hotel. The Court of Appeal set aside the conviction and ordered a retrial in June 2005 after it was determined the trial judge had given inadequate direction to the jury. Mr Johnston was found not guilty on retrial, while the case against Mr Knight was discharged after new evidence emerged. Johnston and Knight received $146,000 and $220,000 compensation, respectively, and a public apology from the government for the wrongful conviction.[106][107] |
Nicaragua[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 21, 2006 | Eric Volz | Murder of Doris Ivania Jiménez | San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua | 30 years in prison | 1 year, 1 month | Yes |
| In 2004, Eric Volz moved to Nicaragua and launched El Puente (EP) Magazine, a bilingual publication focusing on conscious living and smart tourism. In November 2006, while living in Nicaragua, Volz was falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his former girlfriend, Doris Jiménez, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After a tireless campaign on behalf of his family and friends, and intervention from the highest levels of the U.S. government and other international figures, an appeals court overturned his conviction and Volz was released in December 2007.
After returning to the U.S., St. Martin’s Press published Volz’s memoir, Gringo Nightmare: A Young American Framed for Murder in Nicaragua.[108][109] |
Norway[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September, 1976 – October 4, 1977 | Fritz Moen | The rapes and murders of two women, Torunn Finstad and Sigrid Heggheim | Trondheim | 21 years total in prison (was originally sentenced in the Finstad case to 25 years on May 29, 1978, but on appeal, the sentence was reversed to 16 years) | 19 years | Yes (Posthumously exonerated on August 24, 2006, for the rape and murder of Torunn Finstad) |
| Fritz Moen, wrongfully convicted for separate murders of two 20-year-old women in 1976 and 1977. He was cleared of one murder in 2004. After his death in March 2005, he was cleared of the second murder, based on a reinvestigation of the case by Norway’s Criminal Case Review Commission.[110] The case against Fritz Moen then stood as Europe’s only known case of dual miscarriage, in which a country’s judicial authorities have convicted the wrong person in two separately related murders. | ||||||
| December 24, 1969 | Per Kristian Liland | Murder of John Oval Larsen and Håkon Edvard Johansen | Fredrikstad | 13 years. His sentence was extended by 10 years because he was considered a danger to society | 23 years | Yes |
| Per Kristian Liland, wrongfully convicted of murdering two of his friends in 1969. He was cleared in 1994. His case is known as The Liland Affair.[111] Liland received 13.7 million Norwegian kroner (about US$1.7 million) as compensation for the wrongful prison sentence. |
Poland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 31, 1996 | Tomasz Komenda | Rape and murder of 15-year-old Małgorzata Kwiatkowska | Miłoszyce, Poland | 25 years | 18 years | Yes (May 16, 2018) |
| [112] |
Romania[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 6, 1977 | Gheorghe Samoilescu | Rape, murder, desecration and burglary of 18-year old Anca Broscățeanu | Bucharest | 25 years | 4 years | Yes (1984) |
| On 6 July 1977, 18-year-old student Anca Broscățeanu disappeared after going out to check the distribution lists for candidates at an exam at Bucharest’s Academy of Economic Sciences, only for her body parts to be found scattered across Bucharest just two days later. The investigation team, composed by the Police and State Security, arrested Samoilescu after his number was found in the victim’s diary. He initially pleaded innocent but after 6 months of torture he pleaded guilty for her murder, and in February 1979 was sentenced to 25 years of jail. The real killer was only discovered in November 1980 and executed in 1981. Samoilescu died in 2005 from lung cancer. | ||||||
| June 16, 1992 | Marcel Țundrea | Murder and rape of 13-year old Mioara Gherasie | Pojogeni, Gorj | 25 years | 12 years | Yes (2009) |
| On 18 June 1992, the body of Mioara Gherasie was found suffocated and raped in the village of Pojogeni, where she lived. Police then pinned the blame on Marcel Țundrea, a former railway worker who lived in Târgu Jiu. The evidence brought against him were scars on his penis, the fact that he shared the same blood group with the victim, pornographic magazines found at his home, a false testimony from a relative of the victim, and a suppressed alibi in which he was seen leaving back by train from Pojogeni to Târgu Jiu. Țundrea continued to maintain that he was innocent until he died in 2007; he had been released in 2004 following evidence showing that he was not the murderer. Țundrea was acquitted posthumously in 2009. George Avram, a man who was already jailed for murdering someone else in 1995 was accused of murdering Mioara Gherasie and received a 25-year prison sentence.[113] |
South Africa[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Thembekile Molaudzi | Robbery and murder | Pretoria, South Africa | Life on four counts | 11 years | Yes |
| In 2002, Dingaan Makuna, a policeman was killed during a failed hijacking. The police arrested several men, including Molaudzi, a Pretoria taxi driver. One of the co-defendants, (described later in court as a «reckless liar») said Molaudzi was one of the perpetrators although he later withdrew this confession. In spite of no other evidence linking him to the crime and the fact that Makuna’s daughter who had witnessed the crime did not identify Moladuzi, he was convicted and sentenced to life in jail. Moladuzi spent his time in jail trying to prove his innocence (many of the court and police documents had mysteriously disappeared), was physically abused by the warders and spent four years in solitary confinement. In 2013 the Constitutional Court overturned his conviction.[114][115] |
South Korea[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Jeong Won-seop | Rape and murder | Chuncheon | Life imprisonment | 15 years | Yes |
| In 1972, a nine-year-old girl who was the daughter of a police chief was raped and murdered after leaving her home to visit a comic book shop. Jeong Won-seop, the owner of the comic book shop she had intended to visit, was arrested for her rape and murder. He was convicted on the basis of a confession later found to have been extracted through torture and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Chuncheon District Court, and released on parole in 1987 after serving 15 years. He was granted a retrial and acquitted by the Chuncheon District Court in 2008.[116] |
Spain[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 16, 1491 | Alonso, Lope, García, Juan and Yosef Franco; Benito García, Moshe Abenamías | Murder of the Holy Child of La Guardia* | La Guardia, Toledo | Death | Variable | No |
| Six conversos and two Jews were arrested by the Spanish Inquisition and confessed under torture to have murdered a Christian child in La Guardia as part of a magic ritual; at least five were burned at an auto de fe in Avila. Because of constant contradictions and legal irregularities, the fact that the child was never named, no body was found, no child disappearance or murder was reported in La Guardia around that time, and obvious similarities with other European blood libels and antisemitic legends, historians agree that neither crime nor child actually existed. It is believed that the process was a sham to incite the expulsion of all Jews from Spain, which was decreed four months later. | ||||||
| May 25, 1918 | Gregorio Valero, León Sánchez | Murder of José María Grimaldos* (a.k.a. «the Crime of Cuenca»)* | Osa de la Vega, Cuenca | 18 years in prison (each) | 12 years and 2 months | Yes |
| Grimaldos, a shepherd, disappeared after an animal sale in 1910. His family accused Valero and Sánchez of killing him and stealing the money because they had a history of bullying Grimaldos. The case was dismissed by the local examining magistrate due to lack of evidence but it was reopened by his successor, Emilio Isasa Echenique, in 1913. Under Isasa’s watch, Valero and Sánchez were arrested and extrajudicially tortured to make them confess. No body was found and the accused ended up claiming that they had fed it to pigs, then burned and grinded all remains left. After Grimaldos was found alive in Mira in 1926, the Supreme Court overturned the sentence and started proceedings against the responsible for the 1913 investigation. Isasa could not be judged because of his sudden death, officially attributed to a heart attack but suspected of being a suicide. | ||||||
| October 9, 1999 | Dolores Vázquez | Murder of Rocío Wanninkhof | Mijas, Málaga | 15 years in prison | 17 months | Yes |
| Vázquez, the estranged lover of Wanninkhof’s mother, was accused by her of the murder, and subsequently convicted in a jury trial despite the lack of evidence tying her to the crime. After three months, the High Court of Andalusia overturned the sentence citing gross irregularities and ordered a retrial. All charges against Vázquez were dropped when DNA found near the body was matched to Tony Alexander King, a convicted sexual offender and the murderer of another teenage girl in Coín. |
Sweden[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976–1988 | Sture Bergwall | Confessed to murdering 30 men, but was convicted of 8 murders | Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland | Closed psychiatric confinement | 22–23 years | Yes |
| The case of Thomas Quick, a.k.a. Sture Bergwall, who was convicted, and later cleared, of eight separate murders in Sweden and Norway, that he had confessed while being under psychiatric evaluation, stands as one of the most infamous cases in Swedish history. | ||||||
| 1998 | Two underaged brothers | Murder | Arvika, Sweden | Yes | ||
| Two brothers, aged 5 and 7 at the time, were falsely accused of having caused the death of Kevin Hjalmarsson. Although the brothers were too young to stand trial, the police held a press conference stating the brothers had confessed to the murder, before closing the case. Following a television documentary in 2017, the case was reopened, and in 2018 the brothers were cleared of all wrongdoing.[117] | ||||||
| 2004 | Kaj Linna | Murder and robbery | Kalamark | Life imprisonment | 13 years | Yes |
| Linna was convicted on the key evidence of «Nils» who claimed he had he had heard Linna planning the robbery. Later interviews with Nils cast doubt on his veracity and Linna’s conviction was overturned.[118] |
Switzerland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 1980 | Werner Ferrari | Murder | Würenlos, Switzerland | Life imprisonment | Still in prison for other murders | Yes |
| In the 1980s, a string of eleven child abductions shocked Switzerland. While eight of them were found dead, the whereabouts of the others is still unknown. Werner Ferrari, who had already killed a child in 1971 and had served 8 years of a 10-year sentence for that crime, was arrested and confessed to four of the murders in 1989, but vehemently denied having murdered Ruth Steinmann in 1980. He pled guilty to the four murders he confessed to, and was convicted of murdering Steinmann. In 1995, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Seven years later, journalist and author Peter Holenstein showed evidence that Ferrarri could not have killed Steinmann, including DNA analysis that a pubic hair found on her body did not match him. A subsequent comparison of dentures proved that the bite mark on her body did not come from him, but from a similar-looking man who had committed suicide in 1983. He was acquitted of Steinmann’s murder in 2007. Due to the other murders, he remains in prison, serving a life sentence. |
Taiwan[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Chiang Kuo-ching | Rape and murder of a five-year-old girl | Taipei, Taiwan | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Chiang was a Taiwanese air force private who was tortured for 37 hours to extract a confession, was convicted and executed by a military tribunal in 1997 for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl. In 2011, another airman Xu Rongzhou, who had a history of sexual abuse, confessed that he had been responsible for the crime and was convicted of it. In 2011 Chiang was posthumously acquitted by a military court. Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, apologised to Chiang’s family who were awarded US$3.4 million in compensation.[119][120][121] | ||||||
| 2000 | Lu Chieh-min | Murder of his girl friend Kuo | Taipei | In 2010, sentenced to 13 years | Four years | Yes |
| Kuo was found dead in 2000 in a public park in Taipei’s Neihu District and Lu was charged. Prosecutors claimed bite marks on Kuo’s neck conformed to Lu’s teeth. Lu was found not guilty in two trials but found guilty at a third trial in 2010. In 2015 the Taiwanese prosecutor presented new evidence to a retrial showing DNA tests on the saliva and semen on the girl’s clothes and body did not match Lu and he was found not guilty. Prosecutors said they would not appeal.[122] |
Uganda[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1981 | Edward Edmary Mpagi | Murder of William George Wandyaka | Kyamabaale, Masaka, Uganda | Death | 18 years on death row, 2 years on remand | Presidential pardon |
| Mpagi was arrested in 1981 for the murder of Wandyaka. Although Wandyaka was alive and well and in hiding Mpagi was convicted on the basis of four perjured witnesses and sentenced to death. An Italian priest visited the village and found Wandayaka alive. The priest got 90 villagers to write to the attorney general testifying Wandayka was alive and Mpagi received a presidential pardon.[92][123] |
United Kingdom[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1660 | John, Richard and Joan Perry | Murder and robbery of William Harrison | Chipping Campden, England | Death | Executed | No |
| Wealthy 70-year-old Harrison was last seen walking to Charingworth. After his hat, coat and neckband were found on the side of the road with a sharp cut and sprinkled in blood, his servant John Perry claimed that Perry’s own brother and mother had murdered Harrison to rob him, and subsequently dumped the body in a pond. The pond was drained but no body was found. The Perrys then alternated between pleading guilt and innocence, until they were all found guilty and hanged. However, Harrison reappeared in 1662, claiming to have been abducted by Barbary pirates. It has been claimed that this case caused British courts to not give murder sentences without a body for the next 250 years. | ||||||
| 1678 | Thomas Whitbread | Treason – conspiracy to murder King Charles II | London | Execution | Executed | No |
| Convicted and executed on the perjured evidence of Titus Oates. | ||||||
| 1679 | Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill | Murder | London | Death | Executed | No |
| Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill were hanged in 1679 at Greenberry Hill on false evidence for the unsolved murder of Edmund Berry Godfrey. Historians accept they were innocent. | ||||||
| 1705 | Thomas Green, Madder, and Simpson, and a ships crew | Murder and Piracy | Edinburgh | Death | Executed | Partial |
| The 21-year-old Captain Green of the Worcester, an English East Indiaman, his first mate, and a gunner were executed, after their crew, ship and cargo were seized and sold, on being forced into the River Forth by weather. The whole ship’s crew had been detained, and charged on an invented Murder and Piracy charges, in retaliation for a Scotch East Indiaman Annandale being seized in the Thames. | ||||||
| 1835 | James Pratt and John Smith | London | Death | Executed | ||
| James Pratt and John Smith were two London men who, in November 1835, became the last two to be executed for sodomy in England. Modern interpretation cast doubt on the facts and legality of the conviction. In January 2017, Pratt and Smith were among those who were posthumously pardoned by the Alan Turing law which pardoned those who had been convicted of criminalised homosexuality offences which no longer exist in the UK.[124][125] | ||||||
| 1895 | Adolf Beck | Ten misdemeanours and four felonies | London | 7 years in prison | 6 years | Yes |
| Wrongfully convicted on the basis of mistaken eyewitness testimony, unreliable methods of conviction and a rush to convict by the police. His case led to the creation of the English Court of Criminal Appeal. | ||||||
| 1908 | Oscar Slater | Murder | Glasgow | Death | 19 years | Yes |
| Oscar Slater was wrongfully convicted in 1909 of the murder of Marion Gilchrist on the flimsiest evidence, and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he served at hard labour until his conviction was quashed in 1928.[126] | ||||||
| 1931 | William Herbert Wallace | Murder | Liverpool | Death | Yes | |
| William Herbert Wallace was convicted of murdering his wife, but the conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1931, the first such instance of a capital conviction being quashed. | ||||||
| 1949 | Timothy Evans | Murder | London | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Evans’s wife and young daughter were found strangled in 1949. Evans initially made a statement confessing to the murders while in police custody, but later withdrew it, citing the shock of discovering that his daughter had been killed and his fear of police as reasons for his false confession. In 1950, Evans was convicted and hanged for the murder of his daughter, largely on the basis of his original confession. His conviction was also assisted by evidence provided by his neighbour, John Christie, whom Evans had accused of being the murderer after withdrawing his own confession. Christie was later found to be a serial killer who had murdered at least six women at the same property where Evans’s wife and daughter had been killed. An official inquiry conducted 15 years after Evans’s hanging concluded that Christie had been responsible for the death of Evans’s daughter. The case was important in leading to the abolition of capital punishment in the UK in 1965. | ||||||
| 1949 | George Kelly | Double murder | Liverpool | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| George Kelly was executed in 1950 for the 1949 murder of the manager (and his assistant) of the Cameo Cinema in Liverpool, during a robbery gone wrong. The case became known as the Cameo murder. Kelly’s conviction was overturned in 2003. Another man, Donald Johnson, had confessed to the crime but the police bungled Johnson’s case and had not divulged his confession at Kelly’s trial.[127] | ||||||
| 1952 | Mahmood Hussein Mattan | Murder of a woman | Cardiff | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Mahmood Mattan, a Somali fisherman, was arrested and convicted of the murder of 42-year-old Lily Volpert, despite the police bungling the investigation. Mattan was hanged in Cardiff in 1952. His conviction was overturned in 1998. £1.4 million compensation was shared out between Mattan’s widow Laura, and her three children. | ||||||
| 1952 | Derek Bentley | Murder of a policeman | Croydon | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Bentley, a mentally handicapped young man, and his accomplice Christopher Craig, attempted a burglary. The police found them and a policeman was killed by a shot from Craig’s revolver. Craig was under 18 and could not be executed; however, Bentley was executed. In 1998, the Court of Appeal quashed Bentley’s conviction for murder.[128] | ||||||
| 1972 | Andrew Evans | Murder of a girl | Tamworth | Life | 25 years | Yes, 1997 (compensation granted) |
| Andrew Evans confessed to the 1972 murder of 14-year-old Judith Roberts after seeing the girl’s face in a dream. He was convicted and served more than 25 years. His conviction was overturned in 1997. | ||||||
| 1972 | Liam Holden | Murder | Belfast | Death, commuted to life imprisonment | 17 years | Yes, 2012 |
| Liam Holden was convicted of murdering a British soldier in Northern Ireland in 1973 during The Troubles. Holden later claimed to have been forced to sign a confession by soldiers who tortured and threatened to shoot him. He became the last person ever sentenced to death by a British court (while the death penalty had been abolished in Great Britain in 1965, it was retained in Northern Ireland until July 1973). After the death penalty was abolished in Northern Ireland, Holden’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released on license in 1989. In 2012, an appeals court overturned his conviction.[129][130] | ||||||
| 1972 | Oval Four | Robbery, resisting arrest | Oval, London | 2 years, reduced to 8 months | 8 months | Yes, 2019 |
| The Oval Four—Winston Trew, Sterling Christie, George Griffiths and Constantine Boucher—were arrested by undercover police led by DS Derek Ridgewell at Oval tube station in March 1972. They later claimed to have been beaten up in custody, but were tried and found guilty. Subsequently, a number of Ridgewell’s cases were discovered to be unsound and overturned, while Ridgewell himself eventually died in prison having been convicted of stealing mail bags. In 2019 the four men’s case was returned to the Appeal Court, who overturned their convictions after 47 years.[131] | ||||||
| 1973 | Stephen Downing | Murder of a girl | Bakewell | Indefinite | 27 years | Yes, 2002 |
| Downing was convicted of the murder of Wendy Sewell in a Bakewell churchyard where he worked in 1973. He was found with blood on his hands and clothing and had been using the murder weapon, a pickaxe handle, to break up firewood.[132] He verbally confessed and then willingly signed a confession, with his accompanying parents agreeing he did not need to see a solicitor.[133] After he found out that Sewell had died of her injuries, he retracted the confession, but still admitted at trial that he had sexually assaulted her as she lay dying.[134] He was a virgin and had never had a girlfriend.[133] He was convicted by unanimous jury decision and this decision was upheld on appeal. In 2002 it was heard that the confession evidence could make the conviction unsafe, and he was released after 27 years. A reinvestigation found that only Downing could have been responsible, with all other suspects suggested by Don Hale, the journalist who led the «Bakewell Tart» campaign to free him, being eliminated from inquiries, indicating he likely was guilty after all.[135][136] New forensic evidence also indicated he was responsible.[137] Downing himself refused to be re-interviewed, having reportedly confessed to the murder several times after being released, including on one occasion when he was recorded doing so.[133][138] Hale’s book was criticised for falsehoods and Downing was arrested in 2004 for allegedly intimidating a witness only days before a BBC programme was due to be shown which suggested he was guilty.[139] Police applied to re-try Downing following reform of the double jeopardy law in 2005, but as of 2022 he has not been retried.[136] In 2008 he was convicted of deception for wearing police clothing in public.[140] At the time his father was also awaiting trial for an attempted rape, but he died before the trial.[141] Ray Downing had previously been charged with 13 counts of indecent assault on three women and three on girls under 16 between December 2000 and February 2003, and was convicted of one count.[139][142] Stephen Downing remains the prime and only suspect in the Sewell case, which was one of the longest miscarriages of justice cases in British legal history. | ||||||
| 1974 | Judith Ward | Planting time bomb | Yorkshire | Life | 18 years | Yes, 1992 (compensation granted) |
| In November 1974 Judith Ward was wrongfully convicted of the February M62 coach bombing, which killed 12 people (9 soldiers & 3 civilians) and injuring 38. She was also convicted of a handful of smaller bombings (which resulted in no fatalities). | ||||||
| 1974 | Birmingham Six | Planting two bombs | Birmingham | Life | 17 years | Yes, 1991 (compensation granted) |
| The Birmingham Six were convicted in 1975 of planting two bombs in pubs in Birmingham in 1974 that killed 21 people and injured 182. They were finally released in 1991. | ||||||
| 1974 | Jessie McTavish | Murder of a patient with insulin and grievous bodily harm | Glasgow | Life imprisonment | 4 months | Yes*,[a] 1975 (no compensation) |
| Scottish nurse who was convicted in 1974 of the murder of a patient with insulin after being inspired by the plot of A Man Called Ironside. She was released on appeal in 1975, despite three appeal court judges saying there was ample evidence to support the conviction, as the trial judge had inadvertently misled the jury in his final summary.[143] The appeal court judges said that it was an omission that «a few words could have cured».[143] Apart from the case prosecuted, another 23 cases were deemed suspicious by investigators.[144] Although acquitted, McTavish’s case often is mentioned in lectures at medical colleges in Britain, and is cited in textbooks and academic papers about forensic science and medical malpractice.[145][146][147] McTavish, now known as Jessie Gordon, is believed to have been the inspiration for serial killer nurse Colin Norris.[143] | ||||||
| October and November 1974 and 1975 | Guildford Four and Maguire Seven | Planting bombs, making bombs | Guilford and Woolwich | Murder and other charges | Guildford Four: 15 years; Maguire Seven: 14 years, 11 years, 4 years & 3 years, respectively | Yes, 1989 & 1991 (compensation granted) |
| The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were wrongly convicted in 1974 and 1976, respectively, of planting bombs in various pubs in Guildford and Woolwich. Their convictions were quashed in 1989 and 1991. On February 9, 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a public apology to the Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four for the «miscarriages of justice they had suffered». | ||||||
| 1974–1978 | Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney | Contract killings | London | Life | 23 years | Yes, 2003 (compensation granted) |
| Two Essex businessmen and former prisoners, Pinfold and MacKenney, were convicted of murder at the Old Bailey in 1980 after John Childs confessed in 1979 to six contract killings from 1974 to 1978 and implicated the pair, his former employers, in the crimes. The bodies were never found, but MacKenney received a whole life tariff.[148] Pinfold was released on bail in 2001 and after a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, both Pinfold and MacKenney had their convictions overturned at the Court of Appeal in 2003. A forensic psychiatrist, David Somekh, concluded that Childs had a personality disorder that led him to compulsively lie, and the original trial jury were blocked from being told this.[148] Pinfold’s lawyer said that former Detective Chief Inspector James Harrison-Griffiths was told in 1976 by Commander Bert Wickstead of the Metropolitan Police that the apparent first victim, Terry Eve—by then a missing person—was alive and living in west London.[148][149] Lord Woolf, with Mr Justice Aikens and Mr Justice Davis, ruled that Childs’ evidence against the pair was unreliable because he was a «pathological liar».[150] | ||||||
| 1975 | Stefan Kiszko | Rape and murder of a girl | Rishworth Moor, West Yorkshire | Life | 16 years | Yes, 1992 (compensation granted) |
| Stefan Kiszko was convicted in 1976 for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed the previous year. He spent 16 years in prison before he was released in 1992, after a long campaign by his mother. He died of a heart attack the following year at the age of 41. His mother died a few months later. In 2007, Ronald Castree, of Shaw, near Oldham, was arrested on DNA evidence, was convicted of Molseed’s murder at Bradford Crown Court and jailed for life. | ||||||
| 1977 | Robert Brown | Murder of a woman | Hulme, Manchester | Life | 25 years | Yes, 2002 (compensation granted) |
| Brown was convicted in 1977 of the murder of 51-year-old Annie Walsh at her flat in Hulme, Greater Manchester. Despite numerous appeals, Brown’s conviction was only declared ‘unsafe’ in 2002, when three appeal court judges heard how his confession was beaten out of him, the forensic evidence pointed to someone else and a report into police corruption (that led to Brown’s interrogating officer being jailed for four years) was suppressed until days before his 2002 appeal. Brown was eligible for parole in 1992, but he refused to admit to a crime that he did not commit and so prolonged his sentence. Brown stated that clearing his name was more important than his freedom.[151] | ||||||
| 1977 | Anthony Steel | Murder of a woman | Bradford | Life | 20 years | Yes, 2003 (compensation granted) |
| Steel was convicted of the murder of Carol Wilkinson, who was hit over the head and had her skull fractured in Bradford, West Yorkshire, on 10 October 1977. The murder was initially investigated as a possible «Yorkshire Ripper» attack, as this killer (real name Peter Sutcliffe) was in the midst of a 5-year killing spree carried out between 1975 and 1980 across Bradford, Leeds and other nearby towns and cities. However, detectives theorised that Wilkinson’s murder was not linked to Sutcliffe. Steel was convicted based on a confession he made after intense questioning because he was told that he would be allowed to see a solicitor if he confessed. Even though his confession failed to include any details of the murder, and Ripper detective Jim Hobson testified at trial that he did not believe the confession, he was narrowly convicted. The conviction was quashed in 2003 after it was heard that Steel was mentally handicapped and a vulnerable interviewee. He received £100,000 in compensation but died shortly afterwards. Since his acquittal, several investigators have stated that Sutcliffe was the likely perpetrator, indicated by the fact that Sutcliffe knew Wilkinson, had argued with her father over his advances towards her, and had earlier that day mutilated one of his confirmed victims nearby. Sutcliffe did not confess to the murder at his trial in 1981, but by this time Steel was already serving time for the murder.[152][153] | ||||||
| 1978 | Paul Blackburn | Attempted murder | Chester | Life imprisonment | 25 years | Yes, 2005 (compensation granted) |
| Paul Blackburn was convicted in 1978 when aged 15 of the attempted murder of a nine-year-old boy, and spent more than 25 years in 18 different prisons, during which time he maintained his innocence. He said he had never considered saying he was guilty to secure an earlier release because it was a matter of «integrity». He was finally released in May 2005 having served 25 years when the Court of Appeal ruled his trial was unfair and his conviction ‘unsafe’. | ||||||
| 1978 | Bridgewater Four | Murder of a boy | Stourbridge | Life and 12 years (Malloy) | 18 years | Yes, 1997 |
| The Bridgewater Four were convicted in 1979 of murdering Carl Bridgewater, a 13-year-old paper boy who was shot on his round when he disturbed robbers at a farm in Staffordshire. Patrick Molloy died in jail in 1981. The remaining three were released in 1997 after their convictions were overturned. | ||||||
| 1979 | Sean Hodgson | Murder | Southampton | Life imprisonment | 27 years | Yes, 2009 (compensation granted) |
| Sean Hodgson, also known as Robert Graham Hodgson, was convicted in 1982 of the 1979 murder of Teresa De Simone following various confessions to police, although he pleaded not guilty at his trial. His defence said he was a pathological liar and the confessions were untrue. After 27 years in jail, he was released on March 18, 2009, by the Court of Appeal as a result of advances in DNA analysis that established his innocence.[154] Later in 2009, it was revealed that a deceased man, David Lace (who committed suicide in 1988), was the likely killer of De Simone, with the dead man’s DNA matching the killer’s.[155] | ||||||
| 1984 | Thomas Campbell and Joseph Steele | Arson and murder | East Glasgow | Life imprisonment | 20 years | Yes, 2004 (compensation granted) |
| On 16 April 1984, a fire at a flat in Ruchazie, a housing estate in Glasgow, led to the deaths of 18-year old Arthur «Fat Boy» Doyle, and 4 of his family members, 2 of them being minors. Thomas «TC» Campbell and Joseph Steele were convicted, despite one of the two eyewitnesses (Joseph Granger) stating in court that his testimony was fabricated. Eight years later, the other eyewitness, William Love admitted to having lied to the trial, having been accused previously of perverting the course of justice three times. Evidence also came out that the two men had been subject to police abuse, Campbell having accused the police of «fitting him up». Steele and Campbell both staged protest actions, Steele having once glued himself to the gates of the Buckingham Palace and Campbell having went on hunger strike. Both men first appealed their convictions in 1989 but only in 2004, the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh overturned their convictions. In 2019, Thomas Campbell died at his home. | ||||||
| 1985 | Colin Campbell | Murder | West London | Life imprisonment | N/A[b] | No[c] (no compensation) |
| Double-killer Campbell was (almost certainly correctly[156]) convicted of murder after abducting 29-year-old Deirdre Sainsbury on the South Circular Road at Roehampton in 1984 before killing her after she rejected his sexual advances and dumping her body naked on Denham Golf Course. A man made note of the number plate of the car, and after police found the car belonged to Campbell they searched his house, finding the murdered woman’s missing clothes inside. Although he admitted killing Sainsbury, he claimed he had only done so as he had an epileptic fit. The jury at his trial did not believe the idea that an epileptic fit could explain such a brutal and sexually motivated murder and found him guilty of murder. However, his murder conviction was dubiously quashed in 1996 after his defence employed experts who claimed that epilepsy could explain the murder. At a retrial he pled guilty to the alternative charge of manslaughter and this plea was accepted by the Crown. Although officially a ‘miscarriage of justice’ case since his murder conviction was quashed, it materialised in 2013 that Campbell had already abducted and murdered a woman in west London three years earlier, with DNA proving he was responsible for the high-profile murder of Claire Woolterton in 1981 and thus discrediting the idea that he had killed Sainsbury due to epilepsy. At his trial for this murder in 2013 the experts who had testified at his 1996 appeal that he could have killed Sainsbury due to epilepsy refused to do so again, saying «the fact that he had committed two similar crimes would significantly weaken the possibility that the factors that we determined about his epilepsy at Broadmoor Hospital could have played the central role that was suggested in the case of the Deirdre Sainsbury killing. If it is found that he was present and did carry out the earlier killing then this must raise questions about the significance of epilepsy in the second killing». The judge said in his sentencing remarks that he should never have had his murder conviction in Sainsbury’s case downgraded, commenting: «Had it been known in 1999 that you were responsible as well for the killing of Claire Woolterton, the prosecution would never have accepted your plea of diminished responsibility in relation to the killing of Deirdre Sainsbury. It is also unlikely that Dr Fenwick and Professor Fenton (the epilepsy experts) would have been able to support such a defence».[157][158][159][160][161][156] | ||||||
| 1985 | Winston Silcott | Murder | London | Imprisonment | 6 years | Yes, 1991 (compensation granted) |
| Winston Silcott was convicted (he was already serving 18 years for the murder of Tony Smith) for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot in Tottenham. He was cleared in 1991, when new evidence came to light. | ||||||
| 1986 | Michael Shirley | Rape and murder of Linda Cook | Portsmouth | Life imprisonment | 16 years | Yes, 2003 |
| Michael Shirley, a Royal Navy seaman, was convicted of the rape and murder of a 24-year-old barmaid in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1986. After completing the recommended minimum 15 years of his life sentence he maintained his innocence even though this meant he would not be released on parole. In 2002 the case was referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission to the Court of Appeal, where the conviction was quashed on the basis of fresh DNA evidence.[162] | ||||||
| 1986 | Danny McNamee | Conspiracy to bomb | Crossmaglen | 25 years | 12 years | Yes, 1998 |
| Conviction overturned because of other, much more prominent, fingerprints on the bomb circuit boards. | ||||||
| 1986 | Ernest Barrie | Robbery | Blantyre, South Lanarkshire | 18 years | 3 years | Yes, 1989 |
| Barrie had been convicted of robbing £40,000 from the Clydesdale Bank in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire in 1986, but his conviction was overturned in 1989 after a Rough Justice programme claimed that the robber caught on CCTV may not have been Barrie. However, in 2009 he was convicted of brutally murdering his neighbour, having inflicted 47 separate injuries with a knife, a toilet cistern lid, a walking stick and a metal pole over 15 minutes, causing him to bleed to death. He pled guilty to the killing and psychiatrists agreed that he had a from a psychotic illness. In 1998 his release on appeal had been celebrated in an article of the Sunday Mail, in which it was said that his son had since apparently randomly fallen into the River Clyde 300 yards (274 meters) from the family home and died, with the Rough Justice team sending him flowers and a card.[163][164] | ||||||
| 1987 | Cardiff Newsagent Three (Michael O’Brien, Darren Hall and Ellis Sherwood) | Murder | Cardiff | Life | 11 years | Yes, 1999 (granted compensation) |
| The trio were wrongly convicted for the murder of newsagent, Phillip Saunders, who was battered with a spade outside his Cardiff home. The day’s takings from his kiosk had been stolen, and five days later he died of his injuries. The Court of Appeal quashed their convictions in 1999. The three have since been paid six figure compensation, but South Wales Police had still not apologised or admitted liability for malicious prosecution. | ||||||
| 1988 | Cardiff Three (Steven Miller, Yusef Abdullahi, and Tony Paris) | Murder | Cardiff | Life imprisonment | 2 years | Yes, 1992 (granted compensation) |
| The Cardiff Three were falsely jailed in 1990 for the murder of prostitute Lynette White in Cardiff in 1988 and later cleared on appeal due to DNA evidence. In 2003, Jeffrey Gafoor was jailed for life for the murder. Subsequently, in 2005, twelve police officers were arrested and questioned for false imprisonment, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and misconduct. In 2011, eight of the officers stood trial at Swansea Crown Court for perverting the course of justice together with three witnesses accused of perjury. However, the case collapsed, as the judge ruled the officers could not be given a fair trial due to the previous publicity.[165] | ||||||
| 1988 | Eddie Browning | Murder | M50 motorway | Life imprisonment | 5 and a half years | Yes, 1994 (awarded damages) |
| Browing was convicted of the murder of pregnant Marie Wilks, a 22-year-old woman who had broken down on the side of the M50 motorway. Browning was arrested after his friends reported that he matched the photofit of the suspect, and it was discovered that on the day Browning had had a row with his pregnant wife and stormed off telling her he was driving to Scotland. He would have used the M50 to drive in that direction. Browning owned a silver Renault 25 car similar to one seen at the scene, and a 20-foot tyre mark near the embankment where the body was found was linked to a bald tyre on Browning’s car that may have made that type of mark. He was released on appeal in 1994 after it was found that the police had failed to disclose a video of a witness under hypnosis. Reacting, the head of West Mercia Police said: «All I would say is that I was completely satisfied with the investigation». Reinvestigations have found no other evidence or suspect and Browning died aged 63 in 2018. His death was not considered suspicious.[166][167][168] | ||||||
| 1988 | M25 Three | Murder and robbery | London | Life | 10 years | Yes*,[d] 2000 |
| Convictions ruled unsafe after an appeal to the European Court of Justice. A large number of items stolen in the robberies had been found in the possession of the men at the time, and the girlfriend of Raphael Rowe (one of the three) handed police a number of items Rowe had given her, which were all found to have been stolen in the robberies. Prints from Rowe’s shoes were also found at one of the scenes and the girlfriend testified that Rowe had left that night and only returned in the morning wearing different jeans and shoes and carrying a Sainsbury’s bag – which was the same type of which had been taken in one of the robberies. Members of the gang also admitted having stolen the car that was used in the murder only days before. Although they were reluctantly released by the Court of Appeal judges, they insisted that they were not declaring the men innocent, stating: «The case against all three appellants was formidable. The evidence against Rowe was overwhelming… For the better understanding of those who have listened to this judgment and of those who may report it hereafter this is not a finding of innocence, far from it.»[169] | ||||||
| 1991 | Christy Walsh | Possessing explosives | Belfast | Imprisonment | 14 years | Yes, 2010 (no compensation) |
| Conviction overturned as unsafe (procedural irregularities might have amounted to an interference with his right to a fair trial) on a third appeal. Walsh was refused compensation. | ||||||
| 1991 | Michelle and Lisa Taylor | Murder of Alison Shaughnessy | London | Life | 1 year | Yes, 1993 (no compensation) |
| 21 and 19 respectively, the sisters were convicted of the murder of Alison Shaughnessy by unanimous jury decision at the Old Bailey in 1992. The press and media had taken a great interest in the case as it materialised that the murder of the newly married woman in her flat occurred at the time when a love triangle had emerged involving the victim, her husband and his secret mistress Michelle. Two women were seen running from the scene, and fresh fingerprints implicated the sisters, who claimed to have never been to the flat. Evidence was also discovered that indicated Michelle wished to eliminate Shaughnessy as a rival to the love of the victim’s husband, such as a diary entry that read «my dream solution would be for Alison to disappear, as if she never existed». They had their convictions overturned in controversial circumstances one year later on technical grounds and because it was judged that the sensationalist media coverage may have influenced jurors. Reinvestigations of the case did not identify any other suspects, and in 2002 it was decided to no longer formally investigate the case. Bernard O’Mahoney, a man who had originally campaigned for the release of the Taylors and who then had an affair with Michelle, has since claimed that she confessed to the murder to him and has campaigned for the sisters to be re-convicted.[170][171] They were not awarded compensation, becoming the first victims of a miscarriage of justice in the UK to have been denied any.[172] | ||||||
| 1995 | Jonathan Jones | Murders of Harry and Megan Tooze | Llanharry | Life | 1 year | Yes, 1996 (no compensation) |
| Jones was convicted of the shotgun murders of his girlfriend’s parents, which were committed at their remote farmhouse in Llanharry on 26 July 1993. Inside the farmhouse the best china had been placed on the table, as if the couple were expecting a close guest. Jones’ fingerprint was found on a teacup which was only ever used when there was an important visitor, despite him saying he had never used it. It was discovered that no witnesses supported his ‘alibi’ that he had spent the day visiting estate agents in Orpington, with no estate agents in the area saying they remembered seeing or speaking to him. Police also discovered that he and his girlfriend were in financial difficulty, and that Harry and Megan had a £150,000 life insurance policy that was paid to the girlfriend (the victim’s daughter), indicating that this was a motive for the murders. Although the consensus was that he could not be found guilty on this evidence, the jury at his trial were convinced and found him guilty after only two hours of deliberation. He was, however, released on appeal a year later after a campaign by the girlfriend. To this day no-one has ever come forward to confirm Jones’ alibi and there remains no proof of what he was doing that day. He has been denied compensation as there is no evidence that proves he was innocent, and subsequent attempts to solve the murders have failed to unearth any new suspects.[173] | ||||||
| 1996 | Sally Clark | Murder of her two sons | Devizes | Life | 4 years | Yes, 2003 |
| Sally Clark was convicted in 1996 of the murder of her two small sons Christopher and Harry, and spent three years in jail, finally being released in 2003 on appeal. The convictions were based solely on the analysis of the deaths by the Home Office Pathologist Alan Williams, who failed to disclose relevant information about the deaths, that was backed up by the paediatric professor Sir Roy Meadow, whose opinion was pivotal in several other child death convictions, many of which have been overturned or are in the process of being disputed. In 2005 Williams was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and barred from practising pathology for three years. In July 2005 Meadow was removed from the Medical Register for serious professional misconduct and prohibited from practising medicine. Clark became an alcoholic as a result of her ordeal and died of alcohol poisoning in 2007. | ||||||
| 1996 | Donna Anthony | Murder of two babies | Somerset | Life | 6 years | Yes, 2005 |
| Anthony was wrongly jailed in 1998 for the death of her 11-month-old son, also because of the opinion of Sir Roy Meadow, and finally released in 2005. | ||||||
| 1996 | Victor Nealon | Rape | Redditch | Discretionary life sentence | 17 years | Yes, 2013 (no compensation) |
| Conviction quashed after an unknown person’s DNA was found on the woman’s clothes. Nealon was denied compensation. | ||||||
| 1997 | Siôn Jenkins | Murder | Hastings, East Sussex | Life imprisonment | 6 years | Yes*,[e] 2006 (no compensation) |
| Siôn Jenkins was acquitted in February 2006 after a second retrial of the 1997 murder of his foster daughter Billie-Jo Jenkins. He was convicted in 1998 but the conviction was quashed in 2004 following a CCRC referral. The basis of the quashed conviction at the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) were the concessions by the Crown’s pathologist that evidence given at the first tribunal were inaccurate. Jenkins has been denied compensation on the grounds that there is no evidence that proves his innocence.[174] | ||||||
| 1999 | Michael Weir | Murder | East Finchley, north London | Life imprisonment | 1 year | No (reconvicted in 2019) |
| Weir was (rightfully as it turned out) convicted of the murder of pensioner Leonard Harris during a burglary in 1998. In 2000 his conviction was quashed at the Court of Appeal on a technicality, and the Crown Prosecution Service missed the deadline to appeal to the House of Lords by one day. The Lords subsequently ruled that the quashing of the conviction was incorrect, but Weir could not at that point be retried. In 2019, after Weir’s DNA was found on items from the scene and his palmprint was also matched to prints on items, he was re-convicted in a double jeopardy case, becoming the first man to be convicted of the same crime twice and proving he was not innocent.[175] | ||||||
| 1999 | Angela Cannings | Murder of two babies | Salisbury, Wiltshire | Life | 2 years | Yes, 2003 |
| Angela Cannings was jailed wrongly for four years on the now discredited evidence of Sir Roy Meadow. | ||||||
| 1999 | John Corcoran | Murder of Helen Gorrie | Horndean, Hampshire | Life | 3 years | Yes, 2003 |
| 21-year-old Corcoran was jailed for the 1992 murder of 15-year-old Helen Gorrie. She had left her house one night to meet up with Corcoran, who she had only met the night before when he was cruising around the area in his car. She was found half-naked and strangled but not sexually assaulted at a spot popular with courting couples 10 minutes from her home, and police believed Corcoran had killed her after she rebuffed his sexual advances. He could not account for his movements for 40 minutes that night, when he had left his friends saying he had to meet someone. He was released on a technicality in January 2003 and moved back to Warren Park in Havant, but police revealed that there were no grounds to re-open the murder investigation. Officially, Gorrie’s murder remains unsolved.[176][177] | ||||||
| 1999 to 2015 | Sub-postmasters operating the Horizon computer system | Theft, false accounting and fraud | Around the UK | Various, usually fines and imprisonment lasting up to 12 years | Varies | Yes |
| In 1999 the UK Post Office introduced a computer accounting system named Horizon. By 2013 the system was being used by at least 11,500 branches, and was processing some six million transactions every day.[178][179] From 1999 onwards unexplained discrepancies and losses began to be reported by sub-postmasters. The Post Office maintained that Horizon was «robust» and that none of the shortfalls or discrepancies in sub-postmasters’ branch accounts were due to problems caused by Horizon.[180] Sub-postmasters unwilling or unable to make good the shortfalls were sometimes prosecuted (by the Post Office’s in-house prosecution team) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud. Between 1991 and 2015 there were 918 successful prosecutions.[181][182] These were largely private prosecutions by the Post Office relying on IT evidence alone, without proof of criminal intent. Public prosecutions also occurred in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in Crown Courts. Despite this, some sub-postmasters were successfully persuaded by their own solicitors to plead guilty to false accounting, on being told the Post Office would drop theft charges. Once the Post Office had a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act Order against convicted sub-postmasters, allowing it to seize their assets and bankrupt them.[183] According to press reports, these actions by the Post Office caused the loss of dozens of jobs, bankruptcy, divorce, unwarranted prison sentences and one documented suicide.[184][185] | ||||||
| 2001 | Barry George | Murder | London | Life imprisonment | 7 years | Yes, 2008 |
| Barry George was cleared on August 1, 2008, of the 1999 murder of TV presenter Jill Dando after a retrial in which police were unable to rely on discredited forensic evidence. | ||||||
| 2004 | Sam Hallam | Murder | London | Minimum of 12 years’ imprisonment | 7 years | Yes, 2012 (no compensation) |
| Sam Hallam was wrongly jailed for life in 2005 for the murder of Essayas Kassahun. He was released in May 2012 after prosecutors told three senior judges that they would not oppose his appeal.[186] | ||||||
| 2011 | Ched Evans | Rape | Rhyl | 5 years | 2 years 6 months | Yes, 2016 |
| Evans, a professional footballer, was convicted in 2012 of the rape of a woman. In 2015 the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case to the Court of Appeal, having examined new evidence from two of the complainant’s previous sexual partners about her behaviour, which bore similarities to Evans’s account that the Commission decided «could not reasonably be explained as a coincidence». In 2016 the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial, at which Evans was found not guilty. | ||||||
| 2012 | Shirley and Lynette Banfield | Murder | Harrow, London | Life imprisonment | 1 year | Yes*,[f] 2013 |
| A mother and daughter who were convicted of the murder of their husband/father after it was found that they had financially gained from his disappearance in 2001, had tried to murder him on previous occasions, and had lied about seeing him in 2008. They pled guilty to fraud, forgery and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and were found guilty of the murder. They were released on appeal one year later, even though their defence said that the «likelihood» was that «one or other» of the women had murdered him, as they had been convicted under joint enterprise and the judges said that the case required the «application of the established law» and ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prove that they had both acted together to kill him.[187][188] |
United States[edit]
Due to the high number of documented notable wrongful conviction entries for the United States, the list can be viewed via the main article.
Vietnam[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 15, 2003 | Nguyen Thanh Chan | Murder of a woman | Me village in Nghĩa Trung, Bắc Giang, Northern Vietnam | Life | 10 years | Yes |
| Chan was arrested in 2003 for the murder of Nguyen Thi Hoan. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment and had to pay 35 million Vietnamese đồng (about US$1,600) to the victim’s family. His wife Nguyen Thi Chien continued to fight for his innocence and in July 2013 presented evidence to the courts showing that another man in the same commune, Ly Nguyen Chung, had committed the crime. Chung was arrested by the police and admitted the murder in November 2013. Chan was acquitted.[189][190] |
See also[edit]
- Prosecutorial misconduct
- Exculpatory evidence
- Innocence Project
- Race in the United States criminal justice system
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Innocent prisoner’s dilemma
- Miscarriage of justice
- False confession
- Overturned convictions in the United States
- Capital punishment debate in the United States
- List of exonerated death row inmates
- Wrongful execution
- Maurice Hastings
References[edit]
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- «Australia’s Cardinal Pell found guilty of sex abuse, expected to appeal». Catholic Register. Archived from the original on December 15, 2018. Retrieved February 21, 2019.
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Notes[edit]
- ^ Although she was released on appeal, the judges said that there was ample evidence to support the conviction and the technicality that had led to her successful appeal was something that a «few words could have cured».
- ^ Although Campbell’s murder conviction was quashed 11 years later, he then pled guilty and was convicted on the alternative charge of manslaughter at his retrial, and the time he had already served was then taken into account in his sentence. Therefore, he did not spend any time in prison wrongfully.
- ^ Although his murder conviction was quashed, he then pleaded guilty and was convicted of an alternative charge of manslaughter at a 1999 retrial. After his conviction in 2013 for the 1981 murder of Claire Woolterton, the trial judge said that his conviction for the Sainsbury killing should never have been downgraded to manslaughter, saying at his sentencing: «Had it been known in 1999 that you were responsible as well for the killing of Claire Woolterton, the prosecution would never have accepted your plea of diminished responsibility in relation to the killing of Deirdre Sainsbury. It is also unlikely that Dr Fenwick and Professor Fenton would have been able to support such a defence, given the content of Dr Fenwick’s report dated 5th November 2013 in which he said that if you were found to have killed Claire Woolterton «the fact that he had committed two similar crimes would significantly weaken the possibility that the factors that we determined about his epilepsy at Broadmoor Hospital could have played the central role that was suggested in the case of the Deirdre Sainsbury killing. If it is found that he was present and did carry out the earlier killing then this must raise questions about the significance of epilepsy in the second killing».
- ^ Although they were released by the Court of Appeal, the presiding judges said that they were not declaring them innocent, saying: «The case against all three appellants was formidable. The evidence against Rowe was overwhelming… For the better understanding of those who have listened to this judgment and of those who may report it hereafter this is not a finding of innocence, far from it.»
- ^ Jenkins was never found not guilty or acquitted by the Court of Appeal, but after juries failed to reach a verdict in two retrials and the Crown Prosecution Service declined to press for a further retrial, Jenkins was declared formally acquitted in consequence
- ^ Even thought the defence said that the likelihood was that «one or other» of the women killed the man, the Court of Appeal ordered their release as they had been convicted under joint enterprise, and there was insufficient evidence that both had committed the murder
Further reading[edit]
- Jed S. Rakoff, «Jailed by Bad Science», The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 20 (December 19, 2019), pp. 79–80, 85. According to Judge Rakoff (p. 85), «forensic techniques that in their origin were simply viewed as aids to police investigations have taken on an importance in the criminal justice system that they frequently cannot support. Their results are portrayed… as possessing a degree of validity and reliability that they simply do not have.» Rakoff commends (p. 85) the U.S. National Academy of Sciences recommendation to «creat[e] an independent National Institute of Forensic Science to do the basic testing and promulgate the basic standards that would make forensic science much more genuinely scientific».
This is a list of miscarriage of justice cases. This list includes cases where a convicted individual was later cleared of the crime and either has received an official exoneration, or a consensus exists that the individual was unjustly punished or where a conviction has been quashed and no retrial has taken place, so that the accused is legally assumed innocent. This list is not exhaustive. Crime descriptions with an asterisk indicate that the events were later determined not to be criminal acts.
List of cases[edit]
Argentina[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 25, 2005 | Fernando Ariel Carrera | Aggravated manslaughter and robbery | Buenos Aires | 30 years | 6 years | Yes |
| Fernando Ariel Carrera was wrongly suspected by police of carrying out a robbery in January 2005 (Masacre de Pompeya (es)). He was stopped by police while driving, and as the officers failed to identify themselves as police, he panicked and tried to escape. The police then shot at his car as he escaped, and he was hit eight times. While unconscious, his car continued driving for 200 meters and fatally ran down two women and a child. Carrera was taken to hospital in serious condition and survived. He was subsequently put on trial, and in June 2007 was convicted of robbery and aggravated manslaughter. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison, which was subsequently reduced to 15 years. Irregularities were found in his case. He was released on a court order in 2013, though without being declared innocent. The Supreme Court of Argentina officially exonerated him in October 2016.[1] |
Armenia[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 8, 1998 | Poghosyan | Rape and murder | Saratovka, Armenia | 15 years in prison | 5 years, 6 months | Yes |
| Poghosyan was arrested in 1998 on suspicion of rape and murder. He and his brother were subjected to physical violence by the police (beating, punching, kicking, blows to the ears causing a broken eardrum, forced to sit on a bottle) to force a confession from Poghosyan. The Lori Regional Court convicted Poghosyan of rape and murder in 1999. In 2003 following another offense, the real culprit was found, it became clear that the evidence against Poghosyan had been fabricated by the police and Poghosyan was freed. Two police officers were convicted of ill-treating the prisoners and fabricating evidence.[2][3] |
Australia[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 30, 1921 | Colin Campbell Ross | Rape and murder by strangulation of Alma Tirtschke | Little Collins Street, Melbourne, Australia | Execution | Executed | Yes, posthumously exonerated |
| Twelve-year-old Nell Alma Tirtschke left home on an errand for her grandmother. Early the next morning, her body was found in Gun Alley. She had been raped and strangled. Ross was convicted on the basis of several witnesses who testified that Ross confessed to them as well several strands of blonde hair on a blanket at Ross’s house. In 1993, a former school teacher named Kevin Morgan began researching Ross’s case. Morgan found a file in the Office of Public Prosecutions containing the original hair samples, which had been thought lost. In 1998, two independent scientific authorities—the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and the forensics division of the Australian Federal Police—found that the two lots of hair did not come from the same person, thereby disproving with certainty the most damning piece of evidence presented at Colin Ross’s trial. Colin Ross was pardoned on May 27, 2008, 86 years after his execution.[4][5] | ||||||
| December 20, 1959 | Darryl Beamish | Murder of 22-year-old socialite Jillian MacPherson Brewer | Perth, Australia | Death | 15 years | Yes |
| Brewer was the great-granddaughter of industrialist and philanthropist Sir Macpherson Robertson and was heir to MacRobertson’s chocolates. Brewer was killed by an intruder with a tomahawk and scissors in her beachside apartment. Beamish, who is deaf and mute, lived near Brewer. He signed a confession, which he claimed he signed under duress. It was later determined that Brewer’s murder was likely committed by Perth serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke, who confessed to the murder prior to his execution. Another man, John Button, was also convicted of murders assumed to have been committed by Cooke.[6] | ||||||
| February 9, 1963 | John Button | Murder of his 17-year-old girlfriend Rosemary Anderson | Fremantle, Western Australia | 10 years | 5 years | Yes |
| Nineteen-year-old Button and his girlfriend Rosemary Anderson were celebrating his birthday at his parents’ house. After an argument, Anderson decided to walk home. Button followed her in his car but she refused to get in and continued walking. Button stopped to smoke a cigarette before driving on. He found her lying injured and unconscious on the side of the road. She died later at the hospital.[7]: p 42 Button had a bad stutter and police interpreted this as being nervous due to the questions he was being asked. Button was refused access to his parents or a lawyer and was hit once by an interviewing police officer,[7]: p 49 before finally confessing to killing Anderson after 22 hours of interrogation. Damage to Button’s car was also introduced at trial. He was charged with wilful murder and served five years in prison.
In 1963, Perth serial killer, Eric Edgar Cooke, confessed to the murder of Anderson when arrested in 1963 and again before he was executed. At his appeal, Trevor Condron, the police officer who had examined John Button’s car in 1963 told the appeals court that while the car was damaged, the damage was not consistent with hitting a person and that three weeks before Anderson’s death, Button had reported to police another accident. This accident report had been known to police at the original trial but been discounted as irrelevant. The court also heard from Dr Neil Turner, who had treated Anderson. He claimed that her injuries were not consistent with Button’s vehicle. The world’s leading pedestrian accident expert, American William «Rusty» Haight, was flown to Australia and testified that experiments with a biomedical human-form dummy, a similar Simca to Button’s and an EJ Holden similar to the one Cooke claimed he was driving when he hit Anderson, matched exactly Cooke’s account and excluded the Simca.[8][9] In February 2002, the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed Button’s conviction.[10][11] Button now spearheads the Western Australian Innocence Project, which aims to free the wrongfully convicted.[12] |
||||||
| September 14, 1964 | Alexander McLeod-Lindsay | Attempted murder of his wife, Pamela Parsons | Sylvania, New South Wales. | 18 years | 9 years | Yes |
| McLeod-Lindsay returned from work to find his wife Pamela and son Bruce severely beaten. Police developed the theory that he had slipped away from the hotel, attacked his family and returned to work, unnoticed. Blood on McLeod-Lindsay’s jacket was said to have been «impact splatter», and deposited during the attack.[13]
Both victims survived the attack. Pamela McLeod-Lindsay was adamant that her husband had not attacked her. She said that the attacker had an Australian accent. McLeod-Lindsay’s accent was Scottish. McLeod-Lindsay was charged anyway with the attempted murder of his wife and son. The prosecution contended that Pamela McLeod-Lindsay was lying to protect the family’s income. McLeod-Lindsay was found guilty. McLeod-Lindsay was exonerated after a further review by another blood spatter pattern expert determined that the pattern was likely caused by transfer when he cradled his wife rather than by blows.[14] |
||||||
| December 3, 1977 | Edward Splatt | Murder and sexual assault of 77-year-old Rosa Simper | Cheltenham, South Australia | Life imprisonment | 7 years | No |
| Splatt spent seven years in jail for the murder of Rosa Simper but a Royal Commission led to a pardon and compensation of $300,000 in 1984. The commission found that forensic evidence was unreliable and that some contamination of the crime scene had possibly occurred.[15] | ||||||
| June 4, 1979 | David Szach | Murder of 44-year-old partner Derrance Stevenson | Parkside, South Australia | Life imprisonment | 14 years | No |
| [16] | ||||||
| August 17, 1980 | Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton | Murder of her daughter, Azaria* | Uluru, Northern Territory of Australia | Life imprisonment | 3 years | Yes |
| Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton was convicted in 1982 for the murder of her nine-week-old daughter, Azaria, after claiming that the baby had been taken by a dingo. In 1986, a British tourist fell to his death in Uluru while hiking. During the search for his remains, Azaria’s missing matinee jacket was discovered in an area full of dingo lairs.[17] The Chief Minister of the Northern Territory ordered Lindy Chamberlain’s immediate release and the case was reopened. On September 15, 1988, the Northern Territory Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously overturned all convictions against Lindy and her husband, Michael Chamberlain, who had been convicted of accessory after the fact.[18][19][20][21] | ||||||
| June 22, 1982 | Ray, Peter and Brian Mickelberg | Robbery (the Perth Mint Swindle) | Perth, Western Australia | 20, 16 and 12 years in prison, respectively. | Varied | Yes |
| Ray, Peter, and Brian Mickelberg were convicted in 1983 of the Perth Mint Swindle. In 2002, Tony Lewandowski came forward and admitted the police had framed the brothers. In July 2004 their convictions were quashed and as part of a libel settlement, the West Australian police issued a public apology in December 2007. They were given A$500,000 each and $658,672 to cover legal fees.[22][23] | ||||||
| 1984 | Kevin Condren | Murder | Goodna, Queensland | Life imprisonment | Six years | Yes |
| Condren was an aboriginal Australian who was convicted on the basis of his alleged confession, which he said was based on police coercion and fabrication. Three new witnesses who did not testify at his trial came forward. Based on their testimony and serious doubts about the validity of Condren’s confession, the Court of Appeal reversed his conviction in 1990. He was awarded A$400,000 in 1991.[24] | ||||||
| January 10, 1989 | David Eastman | Assassination of Police Commissioner Colin Winchester | Canberra, Australian Capital Territory | Life imprisonment | 19 years | Yes |
| Eastman was found guilty after a trial by jury in 1995. After 19 years in gaol a judicial inquiry determined that Eastman was the victim of a miscarriage of justice; his conviction was quashed on August 22, 2014, and he was released. He was tried a second time and, on November 22, 2018, found not guilty. | ||||||
| September 1991 | Graham Stafford | Murder of Leanne Sarah Holland | Queensland | Life imprisonment | 14 years | Yes |
| The conviction of Stafford was based on forensic evidence that was undermined in subsequent appeals, including an unprecedented third appeal.[25] The Court of Appeal held he had been denied a fair trial and ordered a retrial;[26] However, the Director of Public Prosecutions subsequently decided a new trial would not be in the public interest.[25] | ||||||
| March 18, 1994 | Henry Keogh | Murder of his fiancée, Anna-Jane Cheney | Magill, South Australia | 26 years | 21 years | No |
| The evidence used in Keogh’s trial was scanty and obscure, and it was later revealed that police withheld vital information from his defence team. His conviction was quashed,[27] and while a retrial was initially pursued,[28] it was subsequently abandoned. The police uncovered evidence pointing to convicted murderer Simon Rochford but Rochford committed suicide in his prison cell in 2006. | ||||||
| May 23, 1994 | Andrew Mallard | Murder of Pamela Lawrence | Perth, Western Australia | 11 years | Yes | |
| Andrew Mallard was convicted for the murder of jeweller Pamela Lawrence in 1994 after eight unrecorded hours of police interrogation and a brief recorded «confession» that followed. In 2005, the High Court of Australia was advised that the prosecution and/or police had withheld evidence that showed his innocence, and overturned his conviction.[29] Mallard was released from prison. A «cold case» review of the murder conducted after Mallard’s release implicated Simon Rochford as the actual offender, and Mallard was exonerated. | ||||||
| December 1996 and February 1997 | George Pell | Child sexual abuse | St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia | 6 years | 1 year, 40 days | Yes |
| In a much-publicized case, Pell, a cardinal of the Catholic Church and high-ranking official of the Roman Curia, was found guilty on December 11, 2018, on five charges related to sexual assault of two 13-year-old boys while Archbishop of Melbourne in the 1990s and was sentenced to six years in prison.[30][31] In August 2019, an appeal against his conviction was dismissed by a majority of two-to-one in the Victorian Court of Appeal.[32] The High Court of Australia ultimately quashed Pell’s convictions and substituted verdicts of acquittal on April 7, 2020, in a unanimous decision. In the Court’s summary of its judgment, the justices wrote that there was «a significant possibility that an innocent person has been convicted because the evidence did not establish guilt to the requisite standard of proof».[33][34][35][36] |
Brazil[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 – 2011 | Jorge Luiz Thais Martins | Murders of nine drug addicts | Curitiba | 5 years | Yes | |
| A former colonel in the Military Firefighters Corps, Thais was arrested for the murders after several witnesses mistakenly identified him as the killer and that he supposedly wanted to avenge the murder of his son, who was killed during a botched robbery in 2009. He was acquitted and formally exonerated in 2016, when members of a death squad formed by five Military Police officers was linked to the murders. Thais successfully sued the state of Paraná in 2019 and compensated with 50,000 reais.[37] |
Canada[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 9, 1959 | Steven Truscott | Rape and murder of classmate Lynne Harper | Vanastra, Ontario | Death, then Life in Prison | 10 years | Yes |
| Steven Truscott’s wrongful conviction of murder in the death of Lynne Harper stood for 48 years before finally being overturned on August 28, 2007. | ||||||
| December 14, 1961 | Réjean Hinse | Armed robbery of a general store | Mont-Laurier, Quebec | 15 years | 8 years | Yes |
| Claimed he was 200 km away in Montreal at the time of the robbery. The Quebec Police Commission concluded in 1989 that Hinse was the victim of «a botched investigation». Acquitted by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1997 and paid C$13.1 million by the Quebec and Federal Governments—the largest wrongful conviction award in Canadian history. | ||||||
| August 9, 1967 | Roméo Phillion | Murder of Léopold Roy | Ottawa, Ontario | Life in prison | 31 years | Yes |
| Murder of veteran of fire department Léopold Roy[38] Phillion died in 2015 at the age of 76 before his $14 million lawsuit against the Ontario government had been settled. The longest ever sentence served by a Canadian prisoner whose conviction was later overturned. | ||||||
| January 31, 1969 | David Milgaard | Murder of 20-year-old nursing student, Gail Miller | Saskatoon, Saskatchewan | Life in Prison | 23 years | Yes |
| In 1969, 16-year-old David Milgaard was convicted and given a life sentence for the murder of 20-year-old nursing aide Gail Miller. After 23 years of imprisonment, the Supreme Court of Canada allowed for the release of Milgaard. In 1997 Milgaard, received an apology from the Saskatchewan government after DNA tests in the U.K. excluded him.[citation needed] | ||||||
| May 28, 1971 | Donald Marshall Jr. | Murder of Sandy Seale | Sydney, Nova Scotia | Life imprisonment | 11 years | Yes |
| Donald Marshall and Sandy Seale, then both 17 years old, had been walking around Wentworth Park in Sydney, Nova Scotia during the late evening with the intent to «roll a drunk» as stated at Marshall’s trial. They confronted an older man they encountered in the park named Roy Ebsary. Seale was stabbed to death. Police speculated that Marshall had murdered Seale and he was convicted on the basis of witness statements.[39][40] Several years later, a witness came forward to say he had seen another man stab Seale, and several prior witness statements pinpointing Marshall were recanted. A year after the appeal, the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal declared him not guilty of the murder. In its ruling, however, the court opined that Marshall was «the author of his own misfortune», essentially blaming him for the conviction.[41][42][43][44] A 1990 royal commission of inquiry criticized that finding as «a serious and fundamental error», blaming police incompetence and «systemic racism» for the conviction (Marshall is Mi’kmaq). His case led to widespread changes in Canada’s evidence disclosure rules. Prosecutors had withheld exculpatory evidence from the defence in the Marshall case; the prosecution must now fully disclose to the defence any evidence it has in its possession. Ebsary was subsequently tried and convicted of manslaughter.[39] | ||||||
| December 23, 1981 | Thomas Sophonow | Murder of 16-year-old Barbara Stoppel | 4 years | Yes | ||
| Stoppel was working at the Ideal Donut Shop in Winnipeg when she was found strangled in the restroom with a nylon cord. She died five days later. Witnesses gave police a description of a man wearing a cowboy hat enter the establishment, lock the door, and walk towards the back. Sophonow, who had a police record, bore a resemblance to the sketch. He was convicted on the basis of the eyewitness identification and a jailhouse informant who testified that Sophonow confessed to him. Sophonow was tried three times. The first ended in a mistrial, the second two in convictions. Both convictions were overturned and the court of appeal ordered an acquittal. The Winnipeg police service began a reinvestigation and in June 2000, they publicly announced that Sophonow was innocent and another suspect had been identified. In 2001, Justice Peter Cory concluded that police misconduct contributed to the wrongful conviction. The use of jailhouse informants and misuse and manipulation of eyewitness accounts was criticized.[45] | ||||||
| October 3, 1984 | Guy Paul Morin | Rape and murder of his 9-year-old neighbour, Christine Jessop | Queensville, Ontario | Life in prison | 3 years | Yes |
| Jessop disappeared after being dropped off by the school bus at her home.[46] Her body was discovered on December 31, nearly three months later. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered.[47] Morin was arrested for Jessop’s murder in April 1985 and was acquitted.[47][48] The Crown exercised its right to appeal the verdict on the grounds that the trial judge made a fundamental error prejudicing the Crown’s right to a fair trial.[49] In 1987 the Court of Appeal ordered a new trial.[50] In 1992, Morin was convicted at his second trial and was sentenced to life imprisonment.[51] Improvements in DNA testing led to a test in 1995 that excluded Morin as the murderer.[52] Morin’s appeal of his conviction was allowed (i.e., the conviction was reversed), and a directed verdict of acquittal entered in the appeal.[50] An inquiry culminating in the Kaufman Report into Morin’s case also uncovered evidence of police and prosecutorial misconduct, and of misrepresentation of forensic evidence by the Ontario Centre of Forensic Sciences.[50][53] The identity of Christine Jessop’s murderer was announced in October 2020—Calvin Hoover, who had died in 2015.[54][55] | ||||||
| June 19, 1990 | Robert Baltovich | Murder of his girlfriend, Elizabeth Bain | Scarborough, Ontario, Canada. | Life | 11 years | Yes |
| Robert Baltovich was convicted in 1992 of the murder of Elizabeth Bain; released in 2000 to prepare an appeal based on new evidence. The Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a new trial, which began in March 2008. At the outset of the trial, the Crown declined to call any evidence, and the judge ordered the jury to bring a verdict of not guilty. Circumstantial evidence pointed to the serial killer Paul Bernardo, an acquaintance of Bain’s, as the murderer. The Ontario Attorney-General denied financial compensation to Baltovich in 2010. | ||||||
| September 1990 | James Driskell | Murder of Perry Harder | Winnipeg, Manitoba | Life in prison | 12 years | No |
| Harder was murdered by being shot several times in the chest and buried in a shallow grave near some railroad tracks. Police suspected Driskell of the murders because Harder implicated Driskell in a series of break-ins. The prosecution presented three hairs from Driskell’s van that they argued belonged to Harder. A later review by the Forensic Science Services in England determined that none of the hairs belonged to Harder. It was later discovered that a key police witness, Ray Zanidean, tried to recant his testimony. In exchange for his testimony, police made a deal with Zanidean that he would not be charged in an arson case. He also received payment for his legal fees and received money for mortgage payments that were in arrears. He also received $20,000 payment. This information was not disclosed to the jury. Although he has not been formally exonerated, he was released on November 24, 2003.[56] | ||||||
| October 9, 1993 | Tammy Marquardt | Murder of her son, Kenneth | Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Life in prison | 14 | Yes |
| Tammy was home with her 2+1⁄2-year-old son Kenneth, who was napping in their spare bedroom. When she checked on him, she found him tangled in the sheets and gasping for breath. Kenneth suffered irreparable brain damage and was taken off life support three days later. Dr. Charles Smith, who was considered to be the leading expert in Canada on criminally suspicious pediatric deaths, was consulted on the case. Smith concluded that Kenneth’s death was not accidental. Tammy’s defence insisted her son died from complications of an epileptic seizure. She was convicted. Smith’s work subsequently came into question on a number of cases. On June 7, 2005, Chief Coroner for Ontario, Dr. Barry McLellan, announced that a formal review would be conducted of criminal cases for which Smith had performed the autopsy. In October 2007, another forensic pathologist assigned to the case concluded that Smith’s finding of asphyxia was «illogical and completely against scientific evidence-based reasoning». In 2011, the Ontario Court of Appeal quashed Marquadt’s conviction and the Crown withdrew the charges against her. Experts hired by the prosecution agreed that Sudden Unexpected Death in Epilepsy (SUDEP) could not be ruled out as the cause of death in Kenneth’s case as well as other natural cases of death.[57][58] | ||||||
| September 21, 1994 | William Mullins-Johnson | Murder of his 4-year-old niece Valin | Sault Ste Marie, Ontario, Canada | Life in prison | 12 | Yes |
China[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1987 | Teng Xingshan | Rape, robbery and murder | Hunan, China | Death sentence | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Teng Xingshan, a butcher, was convicted (the court was told «Teng confessed his crime on his initiative and his confession conforms with scientific inspection and identification») and executed in 1989 for the murder of Shi Xiaorong, a waitress who had disappeared. Shi reappeared in Shandong in 1993 and said she had never met Teng. Teng was posthumously acquitted in 2006.[59][60] | ||||||
| 1993 | Zhang Yuhuan | Murder | Jinxian, Jiangxi province | Death sentence, commuted to life imprisonment | 27 years | Yes |
| Zhang Yuhuan maintained he was tortured by police and forced to confess to the murder of two young boys in 1993. In March 2019 the high court agreed to retry the case and in July provincial prosecutors recommended Mr Zhang be acquitted based on insufficient evidence. He walked free in August 2020. The killer of the two boys in 1993 remains unknown.[61] | ||||||
| 1995 | Nie Shubin | Rape and murder | Zhang Ying village, Hubei province | Death sentence | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Nie Shubin was convicted after the police had obtained a confession from him with a week of «skillful interrogation, including psychological warfare» and executed in 1995 for the rape and murder of Kang Juhua, a woman in her thirties. In 2005, Wang Shujin admitted to the police that he had committed the murder and described murder scene details only known to the police.[62][63] | ||||||
| 1996 | Huugjilt | Rape and murder | Inner Mongolia | Death sentence | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| A young Chinese national executed for the rape and murder of some young people. Unable to find the offender, the local police arrested Huugjilt instead, who was the first to discover and report the case, and obtained his testimony by torture.[64] He was declared innocent after the real culprit, Zhao Zhihong (赵志红), who was executed in 2015, admitted the crime. Huugjilt’s family was compensated 2.05 million yuan (equivalent to US$298,000) by Inner Mongolia High People’s Court.[65][66][67] | ||||||
| 2001 | Chen Keyun | Bombing that killed one person | Fuqing, China | Death sentence (twice) | 12 years | Yes |
| Chen (and five others) was arrested by the police after a bomb went off outside a government office that investigates officials for corruption as Chen had previously been investigated by the office. Chen was tortured by beating, starvation, dangling by his wrists from bars on a high window and deprivation of sleep and signed a forced confession. The others were also tortured. Chen was convicted and sentenced to death and the others got prison sentences. After several appeals in 2013 the Fuzhou provincial court acquitted Chen and the others and offered to pay 4.2 million Yuan (about $690,000).[68] |
Finland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Anneli Auer | Murder | Ulvila | Life imprisonment | 1.6 years | Yes |
| In December 2006, Jukka S. Lahti was murdered in what became known as the Ulvila homicide case. His wife, Anneli Auer, was arrested for his murder in 2009. She was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to life imprisonment. An appeals court overturned her conviction. In 2012, the Supreme Court ordered the case retried after prosecutors presented new evidence. In December 2013, she was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for a second time. An appeals court again overturned the verdict. Prosecutors appealed the acquittal to the Supreme Court, which upheld the acquittal. She was granted €545,000 in compensation, and filed an unsuccessful claim for €2.5 million in compensation.[69][70] |
France[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1431 | Joan of Arc | Heresy and cross-dressing | Rouen, France | Death sentence, burning at stake | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Joan of Arc was executed in 1431 on charges of heresy. She was posthumously cleared in 1456. | ||||||
| October 14, 1761 | Jean Calas | Murder of his son, Marc-Antoine | Toulouse, France | Death sentence, breaking wheel | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Jean Calas from Toulouse was executed on March 10, 1762, for murder of his son Marc Antoine. The philosopher Voltaire, convinced of his innocence, succeeded in reopening of the case and rehabilitation of Jean in 1765. | ||||||
| 1894 | Alfred Dreyfus | Treason | Life imprisonment on Devil’s Island in French Guiana | Yes | ||
| Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly convicted for treason in 1894. After being imprisoned on Devil’s Island, he was proven innocent with the assistance of Émile Zola and definitively rehabilitated only in 1906. See the Dreyfus affair. | ||||||
| April 30, 1987 | Patrick Dils | Murder of two children, Cyril Beining and Alexandre Beckrich | Montigny-lès-Metz, France | Life imprisonment | 15 years | Yes |
| Dils conviction was overturned and he was acquitted on retrial in 2002. | ||||||
| 2001 | 17 persons | Child abuse | Imprisonment | Yes | ||
| In 2005, thirteen people were finally proven innocent of child molestation after having served four years in prison. A fourteenth died in prison. Only four people were proven guilty. This infamous case, which deeply shook public opinion, is known as the Affaire d’Outreau, the Outreau case, from the name of the city where the victims lived. | ||||||
| December 2001 | Marc Machin | Murder | Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris | Imprisonment | 11 years | Yes |
| In 2001, 45-year-old Marie-Agnès Bedot was murdered by stabbing. Nineteen-year-old Marc Machin was convicted of the murder based on circumstantial evidence and a forced confession. In 2008 David Sagno, a homeless man, admitted murdering Bedot and the police found Sagno’s DNA on Bedot’s clothes. Machin’s conviction was quashed and he was cleared in 2012.[71] |
Germany[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 13, 2001 | Hermine Rupp, her two daughters, and her daughter’s fiancé | Murder of Rudolf Rupp, husband of Hermine Rupp | Neuburg an der Donau (Bavaria, Germany) | 8+1⁄2 years | 5 years | |
| Rudolf Rupp disappeared on his way back from the local pub one night in October 2001. Local rumors spread that the Rupp family killed the unlikeable Rudy, who had a history of drinking excessively and fighting. Police had no evidence in the case, but eventually coerced confessions from the family that they had bludgeoned him, dismembered him, and fed him to the dogs. No physical evidence was found, but they were convicted based on confessions that even contradicted each other. In 2009, Rupp’s body was found behind the wheel of his Mercedes in the Danube river in an apparent car accident. Though the corpse suffered by fish feeding on it, there was no evidence of a crime.[72] | ||||||
| August 28, 2001 | Horst Arnold case | Rape | Reichelsheim, Germany | 5 years | 5 years | July 5, 2011 |
| Horst Arnold was a sports and biology teacher at the August Zinn comprehensive school in Reichelsheim. He was accused by a female colleague, Heidi K., of having raped her, and based on her testimony he was sentenced to five years of prison. Only after he was freed, an equal opportunity commissioner (who, at first, supported Heidi K. before and during the trial) noticed several contradictions in her stories. In prison, Arnold continued to deny the crime and refused therapy sessions, which was why he was denied early leave on parole. In the retrial, Arnold was exonerated, and in 2013, Heidi K. was sentenced to five years and six months. |
Greece[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 399 BC | Socrates | Corrupting the youth of Athens and impiety | Athens, Greece | Death sentence, drinking poison hemlock | Executed | No |
| Modern interpretations state this his conviction and sentence were instead revenge for his affiliation with the dictatorial Thirty Tyrants. | ||||||
| 1922 (AD) | D. Gounaris, G. Baltatzis, N. Stratos, N. Theotokis and P. Protopapadakis (Trial of the Six) | High Treason | Athens, Greece | Death sentence | Executed | Executed the day of the sentence |
| In 2010, Greek courts reversed the convictions for high treason of the six. |
Iceland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1974 | Sævar Ciesielski, Kristjan Vídar Vídarsson, Tryggvi Rúnar Leifsson, Albert Klahn Skaftason, Guðjón Skarphéðinsson and Erla Bolladóttir | Murder of Guðmundur and Geirfinnur | Hafnarfjörður and Keflavik, near Reykjavik Iceland | Two life sentences; the other four got 15 months to 16 years (sentences reduced in 1980) | All served their time in jail | Yes[73] |
| Two men, Guðmundur and Geirfinnur, disappeared in January and November 1974. The Icelandic police were convinced that the six suspects were complicit in the murder of these two men although there were no bodies, witnesses or forensic evidence. The police subjected the suspects to intense and lengthy interrogations (including two that had over 600 days in solitary confinement, water torture, sleep deprivation and drugs).[74] Most Icelanders believed the six were innocent. The BBC described this as «… one of the most shocking miscarriages of justice Europe has ever witnessed.» |
Iran[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | Atefah Sahaaleh | Adultery and «crimes against chastity» | Neka, Iran | Death by hanging | Executed | Yes, posthumously[citation needed] |
| Sahaaleh was convicted for «crimes against chastity» for being involved in a sexual relationship with a 51-year-old married man named Ali Darabi. Sahaaleh claimed she was raped by Darabi multiple times over the course of 3 years and then tortured into confessing. During her trial, she removed her hijab, an act seen as severe contempt of court, and argued that Darabi should be punished, not her. The judge sentenced her to death. Darabi was sentenced to 95 lashes.[75]
Unbeknownst to her parents, documents presented to the Supreme Court of Appeal described her as 22 years old. Her birth certificate indicated her age was 16. Amnesty International and other organizations declared her execution to be a crime against humanity and against children of the world.[76] |
Ireland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1882 | Maolra Seoighe | Murder | Maamtrasna, Ireland | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Joyce was one of three people condemned to death for the murder of a local family in Ireland, which was part of the United Kingdom at the time. Joyce spoke no English, his lawyer spoke no Irish, perjured witnesses were bribed, evidence withheld and most scholars have regarded the verdict as a miscarriage of justice. In 2018 the President of Ireland issued a pardon and said «Maolra Seoighe was wrongly convicted of murder and was hanged for a crime that he did not commit.»[77] | ||||||
| January 8, 1990 | Nora Wall | Rape | Dublin | Life | 4 days | Yes |
| Wall was convicted on the basis of false allegations by Regina Walsh (psychiatric history) and Patricia Phelan (history of false accusations). The first woman in the history of the Irish State to be convicted of rape, the first person to receive a life sentence for rape and the only person in the history of the state to be convicted on repressed memory evidence. | ||||||
| March 31, 1976 | Sallins Train Robbery four | Mail train robbery | Sallins, County Kildare | 9 to 12 years | 4 years | Yes |
| Osgur Breatnach, Nicky Kelly, Brian Mcnally, Michael Plunkett, John Fitzpatrick were arrested and beaten by the Garda Síochána to extract confessions under duress from four (Plunkett did not sign). The four were found guilty with no other evidence apart from the confessions. Breatnach and McNally were acquitted on appeal on the grounds that their statements had been taken under duress. Kelly was given a presidential pardon and received £750,000 in compensation. |
Israel[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1948 | Meir Tobianski | Treason | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously | |
| In June 1948, during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Meir Tobianski, a major in the Israeli army, was arrested on charges of spying for the Jordanians. The Chief Military Prosecutor’s order to detain and interrogate Tobianski for 10 days was ignored; instead, he was subjected to a drumhead court-martial. He was found guilty on circumstantial evidence, sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad on June 30, 1948. Later, an investigation resulted in Tobianski’s posthumous acquittal. Intelligence chief Isser Be’eri, who was largely responsible for Tobianski’s execution, was later put on trial and found guilty of manslaughter. | ||||||
| 1974 | Amos Baranes | Murder | Haifa District, between Caesarea and Or Akiva | Life imprisonment | 8+1⁄2 years | Yes |
| In January 1976, Amos Baranes was convicted for the 1974 murder of soldier Rachel Heller and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He had approached the police and told them he had known the victim, intending to offer his help any way he could, but he then became a suspect and was arrested. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. His conviction was based solely on a confession and reenaction he provided to police, which he later retracted, claiming that the police had extracted the confession out of him by physically abusing him and depriving him of sleep for four days. An appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court was rejected, although errors in the investigation were acknowledged.
In 1980, Ezra Goldberg, a retired policeman concluded that Baranes was innocent. He gave the information to Judge Haim Cohn, one of the Supreme Court judges who had rejected his appeal. Cohn concluded that his judgement had been wrong, and suggested Baranes ask for a pardon. Baranes refused, claiming that such a request would be an admission of a crime he did not commit. Cohn then asked President Chaim Herzog to grant Baranes a pardon. Baranes was finally released in June 1983 after receiving a presidential pardon. He had served 8+1⁄2 years of his sentence. Following his release, Baranes continued his struggle to clear his name. Three times his requests for a new trial were denied. In March 2002, Supreme Court Justice Dalia Dorner finally ruled that Baranes should get a new trial. Four weeks later, Judge Cohn died. His last phone conversation was with Justice Dorner; he called her from his sickbed and thanked her for fixing the injustice «that I did». Baranes was one of the people who carried Cohn’s coffin at his funeral. In December 2002, the court acquitted Baranes—without hearing evidence and without deciding whether Baranes committed the crime after the prosecution decided not to have a trial. In 2003, Baranes was awarded NIS1.4 million in compensation. On August 5, 2010, he was awarded a further NIS5,029,000 in compensation. Amos Baranes died in September 2011. A suspect in the murder of Rachel Heller was arrested in 2019. |
||||||
| Late 1970s | Azat Naffso | Treason and espionage | Kfar Shuba | 18 years’ imprisonment | 7 years | |
| In 1980, Azat Naffso, a former military intelligence officer of Circassian origin, was arrested for espionage, after it was discovered that one of his contacts in Lebanon had been a double agent for Fatah. Naffso was interrogated and subjected to various forms of torture to extract a confession. After 14 days, Naffso confessed, and was tried before a military court in 1981, convicted, and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 1987, he appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that his confession had been extracted illegally and that the prosecution had presented fabricated evidence. The Supreme Court judges cleared Naffso of most of the charges and sharply criticized Naffso’s interrogators, accused them of perjury, and of not taking reasonable measures during his interrogation. A plea bargain was reached, under which Naffso agreed to plead guilty to exceeding authority creating a national security risk. Naffso’s sentence was reduced to 2 years and a demotion to the rank of Sergeant, and as a result, he was released immediately. The Naffso affair was one of the reasons the Landau Commission, set up to investigate methods used by Shin Bet, the Israeli internal security service, was set up. Naffso subsequently filed a compensation claim against the state, and reached a compromise under which he would be given $1 million in compensation and pledge not to publicly reveal details of the case. | ||||||
| c. 1991 – c. 1994 | Arnoldo Lazorovsky | Sodomy against a minor and committing an indecent act | Sharon region | 6 years | 6 years | Yes |
| In 2000, Arnoldo Lazorovsky was convicted of sexually assaulting a minor while working as a janitor at the Kfar Saba Country Club between 1991 and 1994, and was sentenced to six years in prison, after being accused by a young man several years after the alleged crimes occurred. Soon afterward, Gregory Schneider, who had worked at the same country club, was convicted of similar crimes after being accused by the same person, but the conviction was overturned upon appeal. As a result, Lazorovsky requested and was granted a retrial, but was convicted again, after which he appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court, which overturned the conviction.[78] | ||||||
| 1998 | Moshe Zagury | Murder, arson, and robbery | Life imprisonment | 5 years | Yes | |
| Moshe Zaguri was convicted of murdering money changer Ephraim Yass by the Haifa District Court in October 1998 after a state witness testified against him in exchange for having a narcotics charge dropped. He was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment and 3 years’ probation. An appeal to the Supreme Court was rejected, and the Supreme Court increased his sentence to life imprisonment. In 2004, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction.[79][80] | ||||||
| 2002 | Elisha Haibatov | Murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit a crime | Negev region | Life imprisonment | 12 years | Yes |
| Elisha Haibatov was arrested in January 2006 for the 2002 murder of cashier Shai Edri in Sderot, who was killed in the course of a robbery. He was already serving a prison sentence for torching his own home and threatening his partner at the time. He was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2018, after he had served 12 years in prison, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned his convictions for murder, robbery, and conspiracy to commit a crime, but upheld his convictions for witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and violating a legal order. His sentence was reduced to 3 years, and as a result he was released immediately.[81][82] | ||||||
| 2007 | Hamed Zinati | Murder | Life imprisonment | 4 years | Yes | |
| In 2007, Hamed Zinati, a Druze land broker from Abu Snan, was arrested for the murder of Youssef Ali, who had been married to a woman who had had an affair with one of his business partners. He was convicted on the basis of a confession that the police had extracted from a third suspect. The Israeli Supreme Court overturned his conviction on appeal after he spent four years in prison. The Supreme Court sharply criticized his conviction, ruling that the court’s reliance on a confession extracted under questionable circumstances was the blackest of moral stains on the Israeli justice system. He was awarded $100,000 in compensation.[83] |
Italy[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | Pietro Valpreda | Piazza Fontana bombing | Milan, near the Duomo di Milano | 4+1⁄2 years, for the charges of «subversive association», only (not directly for the bombing) | 3 years pre-trial (while awaiting legal proceedings) | Yes |
| Pietro Valpreda, an anarchist condemned for the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing, was finally found innocent sixteen years later. He was framed since it was planned to blame the crime on the radical Left, while it was committed by Neo-Fascist groups as the first step of the strategy of tension. | ||||||
| 1976 | Giuseppe Gulotta | Two Carabinieri shot dead | Alcamo Marina, Trapani, Italy | Life | 22 years | Yes |
| Convicted for the killing of two Carabinieri, released when another Carabiniere revealed that the confession had been obtained through torture. | ||||||
| 1983 | Enzo Tortora | Drug trafficking; association with Camorra | 10 years | 7 months pre-trial + post-conviction house arrest of 8+1⁄2 months | Yes | |
| Enzo Tortora, a popular anchorman on national RAI television, was arrested in 1983 and held in jail for months on trumped-up charges by several pentiti of the Camorra and other people already known for perjury. It was soon noted that this was most likely a mis-identification due to confusion with a man having the same surname (meaning «turtledove»), but the pentiti kept on accusing Tortora of the gravest offenses related to drug dealing. He was sentenced to ten years in jail in his first trial held in 1985.
He was spared further incarceration at this time, due to intervention from the Radical Party which offered him a candidacy to the European Parliament (EP). Tortora won election in two constituencies, despite the country being divided between those who held him guilty and those who held him innocent. He resigned as an EP member in December 1985, renouncing his parliamentary immunity. Tortora was then placed under house arrest until he was completely acquitted and rehabilitated by the Court of Appeal in September 1986. He returned the next year to his work in TV, to a moving comeback in his «Portobello» show, to die in 1988 from cancer and become an icon of battles against injustice and a perpetual reminder of a grave public blunder of the Italian judiciary system. |
||||||
| 1992 | Daniele Barillà | Drug trafficking | Liguria | 18 years | 7+1⁄2 years | Yes |
| Daniele Barillà, an entrepreneur mistakenly identified as a major drug cartel boss in Milan, spent more than 7 years in jail from 1992 to 1999, despite growing evidence of his complete innocence and non-involvement in any criminal activity. He has been awarded €4,000,000 for unjust incarceration.[84] | ||||||
| February 14, 2004 | Fabio Carlino | Homicide resulting from the commission of another crime; illegal supply of drugs | Rimini | 4+1⁄2 years; fine; financial compensation to family of victim | Yes | |
| Fabio Carlino was convicted of selling the dose of ultra-pure cocaine that killed cyclist Marco Pantani, and sentenced to 4+1⁄2 years in prison. He was also ordered to pay a fine of £19,000, and another £300,000 in damages to Pantani’s family. His conviction was overturned by the Italian Court of Cassation in 2011.[85] | ||||||
| November 1, 2007 | Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito | Murder of Meredith Kercher | Perugia, Italy |
|
3 years | Yes |
| London-born Kercher was studying in Italy when she was found murdered in the home she shared with Knox. Knox, who was from Seattle, her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and Ivorian-born Rudy Guede were charged with the murder. Forensic evidence, including DNA from feces at the scene and fingerprints linked Guede to the scene, but the cases against Knox and Sollecito were controversial. Knox and Kercher were acquainted with Guede, but Knox and Sollecito claim they were at Sollecito’s house at the time of the murder. Prosecutors argued Kercher was killed as part of a sex game gone wrong.[86]
In 2015, the Supreme Court of Cassation overturned the previous guilty verdicts, definitively ending the case.[87][88][89][90] Rather than merely declaring that there were errors in the earlier court cases or that there was not enough evidence to convict, the court ruled that Knox and Sollecito had not committed the murder and were innocent of those charges.[89][91] According to Vedova, the decision by the five judges was almost unprecedented. Guede’s conviction still stands.[90] |
Japan[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 30, 1948 | Sakae Menda | Double murder | Japan | Death | 35 years | Yes |
| Sakae Menda was convicted for a double murder in 1948, after police extracted a confession by denying him food, water, and sleep, and subjecting him to physical abuse. He was sentenced to death, and spent 35 years on death row before being cleared in 1983, after further evidence backing up his alibi came to light.[92] | ||||||
| 1997 | Govinda Prasad Mainali | Murder of a woman | Tokyo, Japan | Life | 15 years | Yes |
| In 1997 a Japanese female employee of Tokyo Electric Power Co. was murdered in her apartment in Tokyo. Maimali, a Nepalese migrant worker, knew the woman and lived nearby. The police arrested Maimali who was physically abused (beaten, kicked, head banged against the wall) by officers and was not allowed a lawyer. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life. He appealed the conviction on the grounds that DNA evidence at the scene (semen, body hair, under the dead woman’s fingernails) were not his and was acquitted in 2012.[93][94] | ||||||
| 1990 | Toshikazu Sugaya | Four-year-old girl kidnapped and murdered (The Ashikaga murder case, part of the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case) | Kanto region, Japan | Life | 17 years | Yes |
| Sugaya was found guilty based on flawed DNA testing and a confession that he professes was beaten out of him by detective in charge of the case Fumio Hashimoto. Investigation by reporter Kiyoshi Shimizu into the North Kanto Serial Young Girl Kidnapping and Murder Case resulted in the Ashikaga case being found to be part of it, with Sugaya being innocent. It was later found that the prosecution had also suppressed evidence regarding the true culprit, including eyewitness accounts, because they did not match their version of events with Sugaya as the culprit. |
Mexico[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| March 2006 | Jacinta Francisco Marcial | Kidnapping and ransom of Federal Investigations Agents | Santiago Mexquititlán, Querétaro | 21 years in prison | 3 years | |
| In March 2006, six plainclothes agents of Mexico’s Federal Investigations Agency (AFI) raided a market in Santiago Mexquititlán, Querétaro, in search of unauthorized copies of copyrighted works. During the raid, the six AFI agents were cornered by a number of unarmed vendors in protest. The agents later claimed that the vendors demanded a ransom to let them go. Local witnesses to the incident denied any ransom demand was made. Jacinta Francisco Marcial, an indigenous Otomí woman, sold ice cream in Santiago Mexquititlán’s predominantly indigenous tianguis. The six AFI agents who conducted the raid implicated Francisco Marcial after they were shown a newspaper photograph depicting her walking near a group of protesting vendors. In August 2006, four months after the raid, she was arrested for the alleged kidnapping. She was later convicted and sentenced to 21 years’ imprisonment. Two other women were convicted as well.
Amnesty International denounced Francisco Marcial’s imprisonment as resulting from a wrongful prosecution. The group declared her a prisoner of conscience, claiming there was no credible evidence against her, and that she had been prosecuted because of her gender, poverty, race, and inability to speak or understand the Spanish language. In 2009, prosecutors dropped the case against Francisco Marcial and she was released. The two other women convicted of the same charges, Alberta Alcántara and Teresa González, had their convictions reversed by the Mexican Supreme Court in April 2010 and were also released from prison.[95] |
Netherlands[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Ina Post | Murder and robbery | Netherlands | Life | 4 years | Yes |
| Post was a carer for an 89-year-old woman who was strangled and robbed. She «seemed nervous» when questioned and under forceful police questioning she confessed although later retracted. Post’s alibi was not verified, another nearby similar crime that Post could not have done was ignored and there was no corroborating evidence. She was released from prison in 1990. The Dutch Appeal Court acquitted Post in 2010 and the Dutch Prosecutor admitted he was wrong.[96] | ||||||
| 1994 | Wilco Viets, Herman Dubois | Murder | Putten | 10 years | 6 years | Yes |
| The Putten murder case (1994): in this case, the 23-year-old stewardess Christel Ambrosius was found murdered in her grandmother’s house, which was remotely located in the Veluwe. The police arrested four men who had been in those woods that weekend. Even though sperm found did not match the DNA of any of the four men, Wilco Viets and Herman Dubois were convicted to 10 years’ imprisonment anyway, of which they only served two-thirds for good behavior. In April 2002, the Dutch high council (Supreme court) declared both men innocent, shortly after they had completed their sentences. Another suspect was apprehended in May 2008, based on a DNA match.[97] | ||||||
| 22 June 2000 | Cees Borsboom | Child sexual abuse and murder, another attempted murder | Schiedam | 18 years, psychiatric treatment | 4 years | Partially |
| In 2000 Nienke Kleiss was murdered in the Beatrix park from Schiedam. The suspect called the police for finding a body. An under-age witness was abused during police interrogation in order to provide incriminating evidence. The suspect has falsely confessed to committing the crime, but has recanted such confession. He was sentenced in 2002 to 18 years’ imprisonment and mandatory psychiatric treatment. In 2004 it became apparent that Wik H. was the real culprit. DNA evidence also cleared Borsboom. His jail time was interrupted and eventually he was partially rehabilitated, though not declared innocent. As a result of the scandal, Commission Posthumus was created in order to review possible wrongful convictions.[98] | ||||||
| 2001 | Lucia de Berk | 7 murders | The Hague | life | 6+1⁄2 years | Yes |
| Lucia de Berk: was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 for four murders and three attempted murders of patients in her care. After an appeal, she was convicted in 2004 of seven murders and three attempts. In October 2008, the case was reopened by the Dutch supreme court, as new facts had been uncovered that undermined the previous verdicts. De Berk was freed, and her case was re-tried; she was exonerated in April 2010. |
New Zealand[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| June 17, 1970 (circa) | Arthur Allan Thomas | Murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe | Pukekawa, Waikato | Life imprisonment | 9 years | Yes—paid compensation |
| Arthur Allan Thomas, a New Zealand farmer, was twice convicted of the June 1970 murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe. He spent 9 years in prison but was given a Royal Pardon and was released and awarded $1 million compensation for wrongful convictions. A Royal Commission in 1980 found that the prosecution cases were flawed and that after firing Thomas’ impounded rifle, police had planted a cartridge case in the Crewes’ garden to incriminate him, and ignored evidence that pointed to another suspect. The prosecution had also denied alibi and witness information to the defence team.[99] | ||||||
| May 1, 1986 to October 1, 1992 | Peter Ellis | Sexual abuse of children at Christchurch Civic Creche | Christchurch | 10 years’ imprisonment | 7 years | Yes |
| Peter Ellis was convicted in 1993 on 16 counts of sexual offending involving children in his care at the Christchurch Civic Creche around the time of the day-care sex-abuse hysteria. After unsuccessful appeals and serving seven years of his ten year sentence, Ellis was released in February 2000, continuing to maintain his innocence. In 2019, he appealed to the Supreme Court to have his conviction overturned. Although he died of cancer before the appeal could be heard, the Supreme Court allowed the appeal in the interest of justice and delivered a judgment in October 2022. The Court quashed Ellis’ convictions. It found there were problems with the evidence of the main prosecution witness, a psychiatrist, and the jury had not been fairly informed of the risk of contamination of the children’s evidence.[100] | ||||||
| August 16, 1986 | Alan Hall | Murder of Arthur Easton | Papakura, Auckland | Life imprisonment | 19 years | Yes — compensation pending |
| Arthur Easton and his two sons were attacked in their home by an intruder carrying a bayonet. Easton was stabbed and bled to death. Police came across Alan Hall when door knocking in the neighbourhood two months later. He admitted owning a bayonet and a wollen beanie similar to items left at the crime scene. Hall was autistic and was subject to police interrogations without a lawyer for hours on end. When the case came to trial, the police withheld crucial evidence from the defence and falsified a written statement by one important witness. Hall was released on bail after nine years but recalled 16 years later after breaching a condition of his parole. He served another ten years. Altogether it took 36 years for his conviction to be overturned.[101] | ||||||
| March 23, 1992 | Teina Pora | Rape and murder of Susan Burdett | Papatoetoe, Auckland | Life imprisonment with 10 years non-parole | 21 years | Yes, paid $3.5 million in compensation |
| Burdett was raped and murdered in her own home. Pora, who was born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, was arrested on other charges about a year later and during an interview was told there was a $20,000 reward for information. Pora claimed he had acted as lookout for the offender. Later, he claimed he had been present in Burdett’s home. No direct evidence implicating him was presented at trial but he was convicted in 1994. Later, Malcolm Rewa was convicted on DNA evidence for a series of sex crimes, and his DNA matched that found at the Burdett scene. Pora’s conviction was quashed in March 2015. He was awarded $2.52 million compensation, later inflation-adjusted to $3.5 million. | ||||||
| October 1992 | David Dougherty | Abduction and rape of an 11-year-old girl | Auckland | 7 years 9 months’ imprisonment | 3 years | Yes—paid compensation |
| David Dougherty was convicted in 1993 on charges of abduction and the rape of an 11-year-old girl. After serving over three years in prison, he was acquitted in 1997 after new DNA evidence ruled him out. Compensation of over $800,000 was paid by the New Zealand Government and an apology given for the wrongful conviction. The real culprit, Nicholas Reekie, was later convicted of the crime.[102] | ||||||
| June 20, 1994 | David Bain | Murder of his parents and three siblings | Dunedin | Life imprisonment with 16 years non-parole | 13+1⁄2 years | Conviction overturned, paid $925,000 but Govt claimed it was not compensation |
| David Bain was convicted in 1995 of the murders of all five members of his family the previous year. The defence put forward the argument that David’s father, Robin Bain, killed the other members of his family and then himself while David was out on his morning paper run. David spent 13 years in prison proclaiming his innocence and was supported in his pursuit of justice by former All Black Joe Karam. Bain’s convictions were overturned in 2007 by the Privy Council, which found that a substantial miscarriage of justice had occurred. He was awarded a retrial in 2009 and acquitted on all charges. | ||||||
| August 12, 1999 | Lucy Akatere, Tania Vini & McCushla Fuataha | Aggravated robbery of a 16-year-old girl | Three Kings, Auckland | 18 months, 18 months, and 24 months imprisonment (respectively) | 7 months | Yes—paid compensation |
| Akatere, Vini and Fuataha were convicted in 1999 regarding the group assault and robbery of a 16-year-old girl. The Court of Appeal quashed the convictions after two key witnesses retracted their testimony. Akatere, Vini and Fuataha received between $162,000 and $177,000 each in compensation.[103][104] | ||||||
| September 1, 2003 | Aaron Farmer | Rape of a 22-year-old woman | Sydenham, Christchurch | 8 years’ imprisonment | 2 years | Yes—paid compensation |
| Aaron Farmer was convicted in 2005 on charges of raping a 22-year-old woman. The Court of Appeal set aside the conviction and ordered a retrial in June 2007 after it was determined that alibi evidence had not been presented to the jury. Before the retrial took place, DNA evidence ruled out Farmer and the Crown withdrew the case. Farmer received $351,500 compensation and a public apology from the government for the wrongful conviction.[105] | ||||||
| November 12, 2003 | Phillip Johnston and Jaden Knight | Arson | Foxton, Manawatū-Whanganui | 6 years’ imprisonment | 9+1⁄2 months | Yes—paid compensation |
| Johnston and Knight were convicted of arson in September 2004 in relation to a fire at the Manawatu Hotel. The Court of Appeal set aside the conviction and ordered a retrial in June 2005 after it was determined the trial judge had given inadequate direction to the jury. Mr Johnston was found not guilty on retrial, while the case against Mr Knight was discharged after new evidence emerged. Johnston and Knight received $146,000 and $220,000 compensation, respectively, and a public apology from the government for the wrongful conviction.[106][107] |
Nicaragua[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 21, 2006 | Eric Volz | Murder of Doris Ivania Jiménez | San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua | 30 years in prison | 1 year, 1 month | Yes |
| In 2004, Eric Volz moved to Nicaragua and launched El Puente (EP) Magazine, a bilingual publication focusing on conscious living and smart tourism. In November 2006, while living in Nicaragua, Volz was falsely accused and wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his former girlfriend, Doris Jiménez, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After a tireless campaign on behalf of his family and friends, and intervention from the highest levels of the U.S. government and other international figures, an appeals court overturned his conviction and Volz was released in December 2007.
After returning to the U.S., St. Martin’s Press published Volz’s memoir, Gringo Nightmare: A Young American Framed for Murder in Nicaragua.[108][109] |
Norway[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| September, 1976 – October 4, 1977 | Fritz Moen | The rapes and murders of two women, Torunn Finstad and Sigrid Heggheim | Trondheim | 21 years total in prison (was originally sentenced in the Finstad case to 25 years on May 29, 1978, but on appeal, the sentence was reversed to 16 years) | 19 years | Yes (Posthumously exonerated on August 24, 2006, for the rape and murder of Torunn Finstad) |
| Fritz Moen, wrongfully convicted for separate murders of two 20-year-old women in 1976 and 1977. He was cleared of one murder in 2004. After his death in March 2005, he was cleared of the second murder, based on a reinvestigation of the case by Norway’s Criminal Case Review Commission.[110] The case against Fritz Moen then stood as Europe’s only known case of dual miscarriage, in which a country’s judicial authorities have convicted the wrong person in two separately related murders. | ||||||
| December 24, 1969 | Per Kristian Liland | Murder of John Oval Larsen and Håkon Edvard Johansen | Fredrikstad | 13 years. His sentence was extended by 10 years because he was considered a danger to society | 23 years | Yes |
| Per Kristian Liland, wrongfully convicted of murdering two of his friends in 1969. He was cleared in 1994. His case is known as The Liland Affair.[111] Liland received 13.7 million Norwegian kroner (about US$1.7 million) as compensation for the wrongful prison sentence. |
Poland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 31, 1996 | Tomasz Komenda | Rape and murder of 15-year-old Małgorzata Kwiatkowska | Miłoszyce, Poland | 25 years | 18 years | Yes (May 16, 2018) |
| [112] |
Romania[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| July 6, 1977 | Gheorghe Samoilescu | Rape, murder, desecration and burglary of 18-year old Anca Broscățeanu | Bucharest | 25 years | 4 years | Yes (1984) |
| On 6 July 1977, 18-year-old student Anca Broscățeanu disappeared after going out to check the distribution lists for candidates at an exam at Bucharest’s Academy of Economic Sciences, only for her body parts to be found scattered across Bucharest just two days later. The investigation team, composed by the Police and State Security, arrested Samoilescu after his number was found in the victim’s diary. He initially pleaded innocent but after 6 months of torture he pleaded guilty for her murder, and in February 1979 was sentenced to 25 years of jail. The real killer was only discovered in November 1980 and executed in 1981. Samoilescu died in 2005 from lung cancer. | ||||||
| June 16, 1992 | Marcel Țundrea | Murder and rape of 13-year old Mioara Gherasie | Pojogeni, Gorj | 25 years | 12 years | Yes (2009) |
| On 18 June 1992, the body of Mioara Gherasie was found suffocated and raped in the village of Pojogeni, where she lived. Police then pinned the blame on Marcel Țundrea, a former railway worker who lived in Târgu Jiu. The evidence brought against him were scars on his penis, the fact that he shared the same blood group with the victim, pornographic magazines found at his home, a false testimony from a relative of the victim, and a suppressed alibi in which he was seen leaving back by train from Pojogeni to Târgu Jiu. Țundrea continued to maintain that he was innocent until he died in 2007; he had been released in 2004 following evidence showing that he was not the murderer. Țundrea was acquitted posthumously in 2009. George Avram, a man who was already jailed for murdering someone else in 1995 was accused of murdering Mioara Gherasie and received a 25-year prison sentence.[113] |
South Africa[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | Thembekile Molaudzi | Robbery and murder | Pretoria, South Africa | Life on four counts | 11 years | Yes |
| In 2002, Dingaan Makuna, a policeman was killed during a failed hijacking. The police arrested several men, including Molaudzi, a Pretoria taxi driver. One of the co-defendants, (described later in court as a «reckless liar») said Molaudzi was one of the perpetrators although he later withdrew this confession. In spite of no other evidence linking him to the crime and the fact that Makuna’s daughter who had witnessed the crime did not identify Moladuzi, he was convicted and sentenced to life in jail. Moladuzi spent his time in jail trying to prove his innocence (many of the court and police documents had mysteriously disappeared), was physically abused by the warders and spent four years in solitary confinement. In 2013 the Constitutional Court overturned his conviction.[114][115] |
South Korea[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1972 | Jeong Won-seop | Rape and murder | Chuncheon | Life imprisonment | 15 years | Yes |
| In 1972, a nine-year-old girl who was the daughter of a police chief was raped and murdered after leaving her home to visit a comic book shop. Jeong Won-seop, the owner of the comic book shop she had intended to visit, was arrested for her rape and murder. He was convicted on the basis of a confession later found to have been extracted through torture and sentenced to life imprisonment by the Chuncheon District Court, and released on parole in 1987 after serving 15 years. He was granted a retrial and acquitted by the Chuncheon District Court in 2008.[116] |
Spain[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| November 16, 1491 | Alonso, Lope, García, Juan and Yosef Franco; Benito García, Moshe Abenamías | Murder of the Holy Child of La Guardia* | La Guardia, Toledo | Death | Variable | No |
| Six conversos and two Jews were arrested by the Spanish Inquisition and confessed under torture to have murdered a Christian child in La Guardia as part of a magic ritual; at least five were burned at an auto de fe in Avila. Because of constant contradictions and legal irregularities, the fact that the child was never named, no body was found, no child disappearance or murder was reported in La Guardia around that time, and obvious similarities with other European blood libels and antisemitic legends, historians agree that neither crime nor child actually existed. It is believed that the process was a sham to incite the expulsion of all Jews from Spain, which was decreed four months later. | ||||||
| May 25, 1918 | Gregorio Valero, León Sánchez | Murder of José María Grimaldos* (a.k.a. «the Crime of Cuenca»)* | Osa de la Vega, Cuenca | 18 years in prison (each) | 12 years and 2 months | Yes |
| Grimaldos, a shepherd, disappeared after an animal sale in 1910. His family accused Valero and Sánchez of killing him and stealing the money because they had a history of bullying Grimaldos. The case was dismissed by the local examining magistrate due to lack of evidence but it was reopened by his successor, Emilio Isasa Echenique, in 1913. Under Isasa’s watch, Valero and Sánchez were arrested and extrajudicially tortured to make them confess. No body was found and the accused ended up claiming that they had fed it to pigs, then burned and grinded all remains left. After Grimaldos was found alive in Mira in 1926, the Supreme Court overturned the sentence and started proceedings against the responsible for the 1913 investigation. Isasa could not be judged because of his sudden death, officially attributed to a heart attack but suspected of being a suicide. | ||||||
| October 9, 1999 | Dolores Vázquez | Murder of Rocío Wanninkhof | Mijas, Málaga | 15 years in prison | 17 months | Yes |
| Vázquez, the estranged lover of Wanninkhof’s mother, was accused by her of the murder, and subsequently convicted in a jury trial despite the lack of evidence tying her to the crime. After three months, the High Court of Andalusia overturned the sentence citing gross irregularities and ordered a retrial. All charges against Vázquez were dropped when DNA found near the body was matched to Tony Alexander King, a convicted sexual offender and the murderer of another teenage girl in Coín. |
Sweden[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976–1988 | Sture Bergwall | Confessed to murdering 30 men, but was convicted of 8 murders | Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland | Closed psychiatric confinement | 22–23 years | Yes |
| The case of Thomas Quick, a.k.a. Sture Bergwall, who was convicted, and later cleared, of eight separate murders in Sweden and Norway, that he had confessed while being under psychiatric evaluation, stands as one of the most infamous cases in Swedish history. | ||||||
| 1998 | Two underaged brothers | Murder | Arvika, Sweden | Yes | ||
| Two brothers, aged 5 and 7 at the time, were falsely accused of having caused the death of Kevin Hjalmarsson. Although the brothers were too young to stand trial, the police held a press conference stating the brothers had confessed to the murder, before closing the case. Following a television documentary in 2017, the case was reopened, and in 2018 the brothers were cleared of all wrongdoing.[117] | ||||||
| 2004 | Kaj Linna | Murder and robbery | Kalamark | Life imprisonment | 13 years | Yes |
| Linna was convicted on the key evidence of «Nils» who claimed he had he had heard Linna planning the robbery. Later interviews with Nils cast doubt on his veracity and Linna’s conviction was overturned.[118] |
Switzerland[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 1980 | Werner Ferrari | Murder | Würenlos, Switzerland | Life imprisonment | Still in prison for other murders | Yes |
| In the 1980s, a string of eleven child abductions shocked Switzerland. While eight of them were found dead, the whereabouts of the others is still unknown. Werner Ferrari, who had already killed a child in 1971 and had served 8 years of a 10-year sentence for that crime, was arrested and confessed to four of the murders in 1989, but vehemently denied having murdered Ruth Steinmann in 1980. He pled guilty to the four murders he confessed to, and was convicted of murdering Steinmann. In 1995, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Seven years later, journalist and author Peter Holenstein showed evidence that Ferrarri could not have killed Steinmann, including DNA analysis that a pubic hair found on her body did not match him. A subsequent comparison of dentures proved that the bite mark on her body did not come from him, but from a similar-looking man who had committed suicide in 1983. He was acquitted of Steinmann’s murder in 2007. Due to the other murders, he remains in prison, serving a life sentence. |
Taiwan[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Chiang Kuo-ching | Rape and murder of a five-year-old girl | Taipei, Taiwan | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Chiang was a Taiwanese air force private who was tortured for 37 hours to extract a confession, was convicted and executed by a military tribunal in 1997 for the rape and murder of a five-year-old girl. In 2011, another airman Xu Rongzhou, who had a history of sexual abuse, confessed that he had been responsible for the crime and was convicted of it. In 2011 Chiang was posthumously acquitted by a military court. Ma Ying-jeou, Taiwan’s president, apologised to Chiang’s family who were awarded US$3.4 million in compensation.[119][120][121] | ||||||
| 2000 | Lu Chieh-min | Murder of his girl friend Kuo | Taipei | In 2010, sentenced to 13 years | Four years | Yes |
| Kuo was found dead in 2000 in a public park in Taipei’s Neihu District and Lu was charged. Prosecutors claimed bite marks on Kuo’s neck conformed to Lu’s teeth. Lu was found not guilty in two trials but found guilty at a third trial in 2010. In 2015 the Taiwanese prosecutor presented new evidence to a retrial showing DNA tests on the saliva and semen on the girl’s clothes and body did not match Lu and he was found not guilty. Prosecutors said they would not appeal.[122] |
Uganda[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1981 | Edward Edmary Mpagi | Murder of William George Wandyaka | Kyamabaale, Masaka, Uganda | Death | 18 years on death row, 2 years on remand | Presidential pardon |
| Mpagi was arrested in 1981 for the murder of Wandyaka. Although Wandyaka was alive and well and in hiding Mpagi was convicted on the basis of four perjured witnesses and sentenced to death. An Italian priest visited the village and found Wandayaka alive. The priest got 90 villagers to write to the attorney general testifying Wandayka was alive and Mpagi received a presidential pardon.[92][123] |
United Kingdom[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1660 | John, Richard and Joan Perry | Murder and robbery of William Harrison | Chipping Campden, England | Death | Executed | No |
| Wealthy 70-year-old Harrison was last seen walking to Charingworth. After his hat, coat and neckband were found on the side of the road with a sharp cut and sprinkled in blood, his servant John Perry claimed that Perry’s own brother and mother had murdered Harrison to rob him, and subsequently dumped the body in a pond. The pond was drained but no body was found. The Perrys then alternated between pleading guilt and innocence, until they were all found guilty and hanged. However, Harrison reappeared in 1662, claiming to have been abducted by Barbary pirates. It has been claimed that this case caused British courts to not give murder sentences without a body for the next 250 years. | ||||||
| 1678 | Thomas Whitbread | Treason – conspiracy to murder King Charles II | London | Execution | Executed | No |
| Convicted and executed on the perjured evidence of Titus Oates. | ||||||
| 1679 | Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill | Murder | London | Death | Executed | No |
| Robert Green, Henry Berry and Lawrence Hill were hanged in 1679 at Greenberry Hill on false evidence for the unsolved murder of Edmund Berry Godfrey. Historians accept they were innocent. | ||||||
| 1705 | Thomas Green, Madder, and Simpson, and a ships crew | Murder and Piracy | Edinburgh | Death | Executed | Partial |
| The 21-year-old Captain Green of the Worcester, an English East Indiaman, his first mate, and a gunner were executed, after their crew, ship and cargo were seized and sold, on being forced into the River Forth by weather. The whole ship’s crew had been detained, and charged on an invented Murder and Piracy charges, in retaliation for a Scotch East Indiaman Annandale being seized in the Thames. | ||||||
| 1835 | James Pratt and John Smith | London | Death | Executed | ||
| James Pratt and John Smith were two London men who, in November 1835, became the last two to be executed for sodomy in England. Modern interpretation cast doubt on the facts and legality of the conviction. In January 2017, Pratt and Smith were among those who were posthumously pardoned by the Alan Turing law which pardoned those who had been convicted of criminalised homosexuality offences which no longer exist in the UK.[124][125] | ||||||
| 1895 | Adolf Beck | Ten misdemeanours and four felonies | London | 7 years in prison | 6 years | Yes |
| Wrongfully convicted on the basis of mistaken eyewitness testimony, unreliable methods of conviction and a rush to convict by the police. His case led to the creation of the English Court of Criminal Appeal. | ||||||
| 1908 | Oscar Slater | Murder | Glasgow | Death | 19 years | Yes |
| Oscar Slater was wrongfully convicted in 1909 of the murder of Marion Gilchrist on the flimsiest evidence, and sentenced to death. His sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he served at hard labour until his conviction was quashed in 1928.[126] | ||||||
| 1931 | William Herbert Wallace | Murder | Liverpool | Death | Yes | |
| William Herbert Wallace was convicted of murdering his wife, but the conviction was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeal in 1931, the first such instance of a capital conviction being quashed. | ||||||
| 1949 | Timothy Evans | Murder | London | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Evans’s wife and young daughter were found strangled in 1949. Evans initially made a statement confessing to the murders while in police custody, but later withdrew it, citing the shock of discovering that his daughter had been killed and his fear of police as reasons for his false confession. In 1950, Evans was convicted and hanged for the murder of his daughter, largely on the basis of his original confession. His conviction was also assisted by evidence provided by his neighbour, John Christie, whom Evans had accused of being the murderer after withdrawing his own confession. Christie was later found to be a serial killer who had murdered at least six women at the same property where Evans’s wife and daughter had been killed. An official inquiry conducted 15 years after Evans’s hanging concluded that Christie had been responsible for the death of Evans’s daughter. The case was important in leading to the abolition of capital punishment in the UK in 1965. | ||||||
| 1949 | George Kelly | Double murder | Liverpool | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| George Kelly was executed in 1950 for the 1949 murder of the manager (and his assistant) of the Cameo Cinema in Liverpool, during a robbery gone wrong. The case became known as the Cameo murder. Kelly’s conviction was overturned in 2003. Another man, Donald Johnson, had confessed to the crime but the police bungled Johnson’s case and had not divulged his confession at Kelly’s trial.[127] | ||||||
| 1952 | Mahmood Hussein Mattan | Murder of a woman | Cardiff | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Mahmood Mattan, a Somali fisherman, was arrested and convicted of the murder of 42-year-old Lily Volpert, despite the police bungling the investigation. Mattan was hanged in Cardiff in 1952. His conviction was overturned in 1998. £1.4 million compensation was shared out between Mattan’s widow Laura, and her three children. | ||||||
| 1952 | Derek Bentley | Murder of a policeman | Croydon | Death | Executed | Yes, posthumously |
| Bentley, a mentally handicapped young man, and his accomplice Christopher Craig, attempted a burglary. The police found them and a policeman was killed by a shot from Craig’s revolver. Craig was under 18 and could not be executed; however, Bentley was executed. In 1998, the Court of Appeal quashed Bentley’s conviction for murder.[128] | ||||||
| 1972 | Andrew Evans | Murder of a girl | Tamworth | Life | 25 years | Yes, 1997 (compensation granted) |
| Andrew Evans confessed to the 1972 murder of 14-year-old Judith Roberts after seeing the girl’s face in a dream. He was convicted and served more than 25 years. His conviction was overturned in 1997. | ||||||
| 1972 | Liam Holden | Murder | Belfast | Death, commuted to life imprisonment | 17 years | Yes, 2012 |
| Liam Holden was convicted of murdering a British soldier in Northern Ireland in 1973 during The Troubles. Holden later claimed to have been forced to sign a confession by soldiers who tortured and threatened to shoot him. He became the last person ever sentenced to death by a British court (while the death penalty had been abolished in Great Britain in 1965, it was retained in Northern Ireland until July 1973). After the death penalty was abolished in Northern Ireland, Holden’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He was released on license in 1989. In 2012, an appeals court overturned his conviction.[129][130] | ||||||
| 1972 | Oval Four | Robbery, resisting arrest | Oval, London | 2 years, reduced to 8 months | 8 months | Yes, 2019 |
| The Oval Four—Winston Trew, Sterling Christie, George Griffiths and Constantine Boucher—were arrested by undercover police led by DS Derek Ridgewell at Oval tube station in March 1972. They later claimed to have been beaten up in custody, but were tried and found guilty. Subsequently, a number of Ridgewell’s cases were discovered to be unsound and overturned, while Ridgewell himself eventually died in prison having been convicted of stealing mail bags. In 2019 the four men’s case was returned to the Appeal Court, who overturned their convictions after 47 years.[131] | ||||||
| 1973 | Stephen Downing | Murder of a girl | Bakewell | Indefinite | 27 years | Yes, 2002 |
| Downing was convicted of the murder of Wendy Sewell in a Bakewell churchyard where he worked in 1973. He was found with blood on his hands and clothing and had been using the murder weapon, a pickaxe handle, to break up firewood.[132] He verbally confessed and then willingly signed a confession, with his accompanying parents agreeing he did not need to see a solicitor.[133] After he found out that Sewell had died of her injuries, he retracted the confession, but still admitted at trial that he had sexually assaulted her as she lay dying.[134] He was a virgin and had never had a girlfriend.[133] He was convicted by unanimous jury decision and this decision was upheld on appeal. In 2002 it was heard that the confession evidence could make the conviction unsafe, and he was released after 27 years. A reinvestigation found that only Downing could have been responsible, with all other suspects suggested by Don Hale, the journalist who led the «Bakewell Tart» campaign to free him, being eliminated from inquiries, indicating he likely was guilty after all.[135][136] New forensic evidence also indicated he was responsible.[137] Downing himself refused to be re-interviewed, having reportedly confessed to the murder several times after being released, including on one occasion when he was recorded doing so.[133][138] Hale’s book was criticised for falsehoods and Downing was arrested in 2004 for allegedly intimidating a witness only days before a BBC programme was due to be shown which suggested he was guilty.[139] Police applied to re-try Downing following reform of the double jeopardy law in 2005, but as of 2022 he has not been retried.[136] In 2008 he was convicted of deception for wearing police clothing in public.[140] At the time his father was also awaiting trial for an attempted rape, but he died before the trial.[141] Ray Downing had previously been charged with 13 counts of indecent assault on three women and three on girls under 16 between December 2000 and February 2003, and was convicted of one count.[139][142] Stephen Downing remains the prime and only suspect in the Sewell case, which was one of the longest miscarriages of justice cases in British legal history. | ||||||
| 1974 | Judith Ward | Planting time bomb | Yorkshire | Life | 18 years | Yes, 1992 (compensation granted) |
| In November 1974 Judith Ward was wrongfully convicted of the February M62 coach bombing, which killed 12 people (9 soldiers & 3 civilians) and injuring 38. She was also convicted of a handful of smaller bombings (which resulted in no fatalities). | ||||||
| 1974 | Birmingham Six | Planting two bombs | Birmingham | Life | 17 years | Yes, 1991 (compensation granted) |
| The Birmingham Six were convicted in 1975 of planting two bombs in pubs in Birmingham in 1974 that killed 21 people and injured 182. They were finally released in 1991. | ||||||
| 1974 | Jessie McTavish | Murder of a patient with insulin and grievous bodily harm | Glasgow | Life imprisonment | 4 months | Yes*,[a] 1975 (no compensation) |
| Scottish nurse who was convicted in 1974 of the murder of a patient with insulin after being inspired by the plot of A Man Called Ironside. She was released on appeal in 1975, despite three appeal court judges saying there was ample evidence to support the conviction, as the trial judge had inadvertently misled the jury in his final summary.[143] The appeal court judges said that it was an omission that «a few words could have cured».[143] Apart from the case prosecuted, another 23 cases were deemed suspicious by investigators.[144] Although acquitted, McTavish’s case often is mentioned in lectures at medical colleges in Britain, and is cited in textbooks and academic papers about forensic science and medical malpractice.[145][146][147] McTavish, now known as Jessie Gordon, is believed to have been the inspiration for serial killer nurse Colin Norris.[143] | ||||||
| October and November 1974 and 1975 | Guildford Four and Maguire Seven | Planting bombs, making bombs | Guilford and Woolwich | Murder and other charges | Guildford Four: 15 years; Maguire Seven: 14 years, 11 years, 4 years & 3 years, respectively | Yes, 1989 & 1991 (compensation granted) |
| The Guildford Four and Maguire Seven were wrongly convicted in 1974 and 1976, respectively, of planting bombs in various pubs in Guildford and Woolwich. Their convictions were quashed in 1989 and 1991. On February 9, 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a public apology to the Maguire Seven and the Guildford Four for the «miscarriages of justice they had suffered». | ||||||
| 1974–1978 | Terry Pinfold and Harry MacKenney | Contract killings | London | Life | 23 years | Yes, 2003 (compensation granted) |
| Two Essex businessmen and former prisoners, Pinfold and MacKenney, were convicted of murder at the Old Bailey in 1980 after John Childs confessed in 1979 to six contract killings from 1974 to 1978 and implicated the pair, his former employers, in the crimes. The bodies were never found, but MacKenney received a whole life tariff.[148] Pinfold was released on bail in 2001 and after a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, both Pinfold and MacKenney had their convictions overturned at the Court of Appeal in 2003. A forensic psychiatrist, David Somekh, concluded that Childs had a personality disorder that led him to compulsively lie, and the original trial jury were blocked from being told this.[148] Pinfold’s lawyer said that former Detective Chief Inspector James Harrison-Griffiths was told in 1976 by Commander Bert Wickstead of the Metropolitan Police that the apparent first victim, Terry Eve—by then a missing person—was alive and living in west London.[148][149] Lord Woolf, with Mr Justice Aikens and Mr Justice Davis, ruled that Childs’ evidence against the pair was unreliable because he was a «pathological liar».[150] | ||||||
| 1975 | Stefan Kiszko | Rape and murder of a girl | Rishworth Moor, West Yorkshire | Life | 16 years | Yes, 1992 (compensation granted) |
| Stefan Kiszko was convicted in 1976 for the rape and murder of 11-year-old Lesley Molseed the previous year. He spent 16 years in prison before he was released in 1992, after a long campaign by his mother. He died of a heart attack the following year at the age of 41. His mother died a few months later. In 2007, Ronald Castree, of Shaw, near Oldham, was arrested on DNA evidence, was convicted of Molseed’s murder at Bradford Crown Court and jailed for life. | ||||||
| 1977 | Robert Brown | Murder of a woman | Hulme, Manchester | Life | 25 years | Yes, 2002 (compensation granted) |
| Brown was convicted in 1977 of the murder of 51-year-old Annie Walsh at her flat in Hulme, Greater Manchester. Despite numerous appeals, Brown’s conviction was only declared ‘unsafe’ in 2002, when three appeal court judges heard how his confession was beaten out of him, the forensic evidence pointed to someone else and a report into police corruption (that led to Brown’s interrogating officer being jailed for four years) was suppressed until days before his 2002 appeal. Brown was eligible for parole in 1992, but he refused to admit to a crime that he did not commit and so prolonged his sentence. Brown stated that clearing his name was more important than his freedom.[151] | ||||||
| 1977 | Anthony Steel | Murder of a woman | Bradford | Life | 20 years | Yes, 2003 (compensation granted) |
| Steel was convicted of the murder of Carol Wilkinson, who was hit over the head and had her skull fractured in Bradford, West Yorkshire, on 10 October 1977. The murder was initially investigated as a possible «Yorkshire Ripper» attack, as this killer (real name Peter Sutcliffe) was in the midst of a 5-year killing spree carried out between 1975 and 1980 across Bradford, Leeds and other nearby towns and cities. However, detectives theorised that Wilkinson’s murder was not linked to Sutcliffe. Steel was convicted based on a confession he made after intense questioning because he was told that he would be allowed to see a solicitor if he confessed. Even though his confession failed to include any details of the murder, and Ripper detective Jim Hobson testified at trial that he did not believe the confession, he was narrowly convicted. The conviction was quashed in 2003 after it was heard that Steel was mentally handicapped and a vulnerable interviewee. He received £100,000 in compensation but died shortly afterwards. Since his acquittal, several investigators have stated that Sutcliffe was the likely perpetrator, indicated by the fact that Sutcliffe knew Wilkinson, had argued with her father over his advances towards her, and had earlier that day mutilated one of his confirmed victims nearby. Sutcliffe did not confess to the murder at his trial in 1981, but by this time Steel was already serving time for the murder.[152][153] | ||||||
| 1978 | Paul Blackburn | Attempted murder | Chester | Life imprisonment | 25 years | Yes, 2005 (compensation granted) |
| Paul Blackburn was convicted in 1978 when aged 15 of the attempted murder of a nine-year-old boy, and spent more than 25 years in 18 different prisons, during which time he maintained his innocence. He said he had never considered saying he was guilty to secure an earlier release because it was a matter of «integrity». He was finally released in May 2005 having served 25 years when the Court of Appeal ruled his trial was unfair and his conviction ‘unsafe’. | ||||||
| 1978 | Bridgewater Four | Murder of a boy | Stourbridge | Life and 12 years (Malloy) | 18 years | Yes, 1997 |
| The Bridgewater Four were convicted in 1979 of murdering Carl Bridgewater, a 13-year-old paper boy who was shot on his round when he disturbed robbers at a farm in Staffordshire. Patrick Molloy died in jail in 1981. The remaining three were released in 1997 after their convictions were overturned. | ||||||
| 1979 | Sean Hodgson | Murder | Southampton | Life imprisonment | 27 years | Yes, 2009 (compensation granted) |
| Sean Hodgson, also known as Robert Graham Hodgson, was convicted in 1982 of the 1979 murder of Teresa De Simone following various confessions to police, although he pleaded not guilty at his trial. His defence said he was a pathological liar and the confessions were untrue. After 27 years in jail, he was released on March 18, 2009, by the Court of Appeal as a result of advances in DNA analysis that established his innocence.[154] Later in 2009, it was revealed that a deceased man, David Lace (who committed suicide in 1988), was the likely killer of De Simone, with the dead man’s DNA matching the killer’s.[155] | ||||||
| 1984 | Thomas Campbell and Joseph Steele | Arson and murder | East Glasgow | Life imprisonment | 20 years | Yes, 2004 (compensation granted) |
| On 16 April 1984, a fire at a flat in Ruchazie, a housing estate in Glasgow, led to the deaths of 18-year old Arthur «Fat Boy» Doyle, and 4 of his family members, 2 of them being minors. Thomas «TC» Campbell and Joseph Steele were convicted, despite one of the two eyewitnesses (Joseph Granger) stating in court that his testimony was fabricated. Eight years later, the other eyewitness, William Love admitted to having lied to the trial, having been accused previously of perverting the course of justice three times. Evidence also came out that the two men had been subject to police abuse, Campbell having accused the police of «fitting him up». Steele and Campbell both staged protest actions, Steele having once glued himself to the gates of the Buckingham Palace and Campbell having went on hunger strike. Both men first appealed their convictions in 1989 but only in 2004, the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh overturned their convictions. In 2019, Thomas Campbell died at his home. | ||||||
| 1985 | Colin Campbell | Murder | West London | Life imprisonment | N/A[b] | No[c] (no compensation) |
| Double-killer Campbell was (almost certainly correctly[156]) convicted of murder after abducting 29-year-old Deirdre Sainsbury on the South Circular Road at Roehampton in 1984 before killing her after she rejected his sexual advances and dumping her body naked on Denham Golf Course. A man made note of the number plate of the car, and after police found the car belonged to Campbell they searched his house, finding the murdered woman’s missing clothes inside. Although he admitted killing Sainsbury, he claimed he had only done so as he had an epileptic fit. The jury at his trial did not believe the idea that an epileptic fit could explain such a brutal and sexually motivated murder and found him guilty of murder. However, his murder conviction was dubiously quashed in 1996 after his defence employed experts who claimed that epilepsy could explain the murder. At a retrial he pled guilty to the alternative charge of manslaughter and this plea was accepted by the Crown. Although officially a ‘miscarriage of justice’ case since his murder conviction was quashed, it materialised in 2013 that Campbell had already abducted and murdered a woman in west London three years earlier, with DNA proving he was responsible for the high-profile murder of Claire Woolterton in 1981 and thus discrediting the idea that he had killed Sainsbury due to epilepsy. At his trial for this murder in 2013 the experts who had testified at his 1996 appeal that he could have killed Sainsbury due to epilepsy refused to do so again, saying «the fact that he had committed two similar crimes would significantly weaken the possibility that the factors that we determined about his epilepsy at Broadmoor Hospital could have played the central role that was suggested in the case of the Deirdre Sainsbury killing. If it is found that he was present and did carry out the earlier killing then this must raise questions about the significance of epilepsy in the second killing». The judge said in his sentencing remarks that he should never have had his murder conviction in Sainsbury’s case downgraded, commenting: «Had it been known in 1999 that you were responsible as well for the killing of Claire Woolterton, the prosecution would never have accepted your plea of diminished responsibility in relation to the killing of Deirdre Sainsbury. It is also unlikely that Dr Fenwick and Professor Fenton (the epilepsy experts) would have been able to support such a defence».[157][158][159][160][161][156] | ||||||
| 1985 | Winston Silcott | Murder | London | Imprisonment | 6 years | Yes, 1991 (compensation granted) |
| Winston Silcott was convicted (he was already serving 18 years for the murder of Tony Smith) for the murder of PC Keith Blakelock during the 1985 Broadwater Farm riot in Tottenham. He was cleared in 1991, when new evidence came to light. | ||||||
| 1986 | Michael Shirley | Rape and murder of Linda Cook | Portsmouth | Life imprisonment | 16 years | Yes, 2003 |
| Michael Shirley, a Royal Navy seaman, was convicted of the rape and murder of a 24-year-old barmaid in Portsmouth, Hampshire, in 1986. After completing the recommended minimum 15 years of his life sentence he maintained his innocence even though this meant he would not be released on parole. In 2002 the case was referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission to the Court of Appeal, where the conviction was quashed on the basis of fresh DNA evidence.[162] | ||||||
| 1986 | Danny McNamee | Conspiracy to bomb | Crossmaglen | 25 years | 12 years | Yes, 1998 |
| Conviction overturned because of other, much more prominent, fingerprints on the bomb circuit boards. | ||||||
| 1986 | Ernest Barrie | Robbery | Blantyre, South Lanarkshire | 18 years | 3 years | Yes, 1989 |
| Barrie had been convicted of robbing £40,000 from the Clydesdale Bank in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire in 1986, but his conviction was overturned in 1989 after a Rough Justice programme claimed that the robber caught on CCTV may not have been Barrie. However, in 2009 he was convicted of brutally murdering his neighbour, having inflicted 47 separate injuries with a knife, a toilet cistern lid, a walking stick and a metal pole over 15 minutes, causing him to bleed to death. He pled guilty to the killing and psychiatrists agreed that he had a from a psychotic illness. In 1998 his release on appeal had been celebrated in an article of the Sunday Mail, in which it was said that his son had since apparently randomly fallen into the River Clyde 300 yards (274 meters) from the family home and died, with the Rough Justice team sending him flowers and a card.[163][164] | ||||||
| 1987 | Cardiff Newsagent Three (Michael O’Brien, Darren Hall and Ellis Sherwood) | Murder | Cardiff | Life | 11 years | Yes, 1999 (granted compensation) |
| The trio were wrongly convicted for the murder of newsagent, Phillip Saunders, who was battered with a spade outside his Cardiff home. The day’s takings from his kiosk had been stolen, and five days later he died of his injuries. The Court of Appeal quashed their convictions in 1999. The three have since been paid six figure compensation, but South Wales Police had still not apologised or admitted liability for malicious prosecution. | ||||||
| 1988 | Cardiff Three (Steven Miller, Yusef Abdullahi, and Tony Paris) | Murder | Cardiff | Life imprisonment | 2 years | Yes, 1992 (granted compensation) |
| The Cardiff Three were falsely jailed in 1990 for the murder of prostitute Lynette White in Cardiff in 1988 and later cleared on appeal due to DNA evidence. In 2003, Jeffrey Gafoor was jailed for life for the murder. Subsequently, in 2005, twelve police officers were arrested and questioned for false imprisonment, conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and misconduct. In 2011, eight of the officers stood trial at Swansea Crown Court for perverting the course of justice together with three witnesses accused of perjury. However, the case collapsed, as the judge ruled the officers could not be given a fair trial due to the previous publicity.[165] | ||||||
| 1988 | Eddie Browning | Murder | M50 motorway | Life imprisonment | 5 and a half years | Yes, 1994 (awarded damages) |
| Browing was convicted of the murder of pregnant Marie Wilks, a 22-year-old woman who had broken down on the side of the M50 motorway. Browning was arrested after his friends reported that he matched the photofit of the suspect, and it was discovered that on the day Browning had had a row with his pregnant wife and stormed off telling her he was driving to Scotland. He would have used the M50 to drive in that direction. Browning owned a silver Renault 25 car similar to one seen at the scene, and a 20-foot tyre mark near the embankment where the body was found was linked to a bald tyre on Browning’s car that may have made that type of mark. He was released on appeal in 1994 after it was found that the police had failed to disclose a video of a witness under hypnosis. Reacting, the head of West Mercia Police said: «All I would say is that I was completely satisfied with the investigation». Reinvestigations have found no other evidence or suspect and Browning died aged 63 in 2018. His death was not considered suspicious.[166][167][168] | ||||||
| 1988 | M25 Three | Murder and robbery | London | Life | 10 years | Yes*,[d] 2000 |
| Convictions ruled unsafe after an appeal to the European Court of Justice. A large number of items stolen in the robberies had been found in the possession of the men at the time, and the girlfriend of Raphael Rowe (one of the three) handed police a number of items Rowe had given her, which were all found to have been stolen in the robberies. Prints from Rowe’s shoes were also found at one of the scenes and the girlfriend testified that Rowe had left that night and only returned in the morning wearing different jeans and shoes and carrying a Sainsbury’s bag – which was the same type of which had been taken in one of the robberies. Members of the gang also admitted having stolen the car that was used in the murder only days before. Although they were reluctantly released by the Court of Appeal judges, they insisted that they were not declaring the men innocent, stating: «The case against all three appellants was formidable. The evidence against Rowe was overwhelming… For the better understanding of those who have listened to this judgment and of those who may report it hereafter this is not a finding of innocence, far from it.»[169] | ||||||
| 1991 | Christy Walsh | Possessing explosives | Belfast | Imprisonment | 14 years | Yes, 2010 (no compensation) |
| Conviction overturned as unsafe (procedural irregularities might have amounted to an interference with his right to a fair trial) on a third appeal. Walsh was refused compensation. | ||||||
| 1991 | Michelle and Lisa Taylor | Murder of Alison Shaughnessy | London | Life | 1 year | Yes, 1993 (no compensation) |
| 21 and 19 respectively, the sisters were convicted of the murder of Alison Shaughnessy by unanimous jury decision at the Old Bailey in 1992. The press and media had taken a great interest in the case as it materialised that the murder of the newly married woman in her flat occurred at the time when a love triangle had emerged involving the victim, her husband and his secret mistress Michelle. Two women were seen running from the scene, and fresh fingerprints implicated the sisters, who claimed to have never been to the flat. Evidence was also discovered that indicated Michelle wished to eliminate Shaughnessy as a rival to the love of the victim’s husband, such as a diary entry that read «my dream solution would be for Alison to disappear, as if she never existed». They had their convictions overturned in controversial circumstances one year later on technical grounds and because it was judged that the sensationalist media coverage may have influenced jurors. Reinvestigations of the case did not identify any other suspects, and in 2002 it was decided to no longer formally investigate the case. Bernard O’Mahoney, a man who had originally campaigned for the release of the Taylors and who then had an affair with Michelle, has since claimed that she confessed to the murder to him and has campaigned for the sisters to be re-convicted.[170][171] They were not awarded compensation, becoming the first victims of a miscarriage of justice in the UK to have been denied any.[172] | ||||||
| 1995 | Jonathan Jones | Murders of Harry and Megan Tooze | Llanharry | Life | 1 year | Yes, 1996 (no compensation) |
| Jones was convicted of the shotgun murders of his girlfriend’s parents, which were committed at their remote farmhouse in Llanharry on 26 July 1993. Inside the farmhouse the best china had been placed on the table, as if the couple were expecting a close guest. Jones’ fingerprint was found on a teacup which was only ever used when there was an important visitor, despite him saying he had never used it. It was discovered that no witnesses supported his ‘alibi’ that he had spent the day visiting estate agents in Orpington, with no estate agents in the area saying they remembered seeing or speaking to him. Police also discovered that he and his girlfriend were in financial difficulty, and that Harry and Megan had a £150,000 life insurance policy that was paid to the girlfriend (the victim’s daughter), indicating that this was a motive for the murders. Although the consensus was that he could not be found guilty on this evidence, the jury at his trial were convinced and found him guilty after only two hours of deliberation. He was, however, released on appeal a year later after a campaign by the girlfriend. To this day no-one has ever come forward to confirm Jones’ alibi and there remains no proof of what he was doing that day. He has been denied compensation as there is no evidence that proves he was innocent, and subsequent attempts to solve the murders have failed to unearth any new suspects.[173] | ||||||
| 1996 | Sally Clark | Murder of her two sons | Devizes | Life | 4 years | Yes, 2003 |
| Sally Clark was convicted in 1996 of the murder of her two small sons Christopher and Harry, and spent three years in jail, finally being released in 2003 on appeal. The convictions were based solely on the analysis of the deaths by the Home Office Pathologist Alan Williams, who failed to disclose relevant information about the deaths, that was backed up by the paediatric professor Sir Roy Meadow, whose opinion was pivotal in several other child death convictions, many of which have been overturned or are in the process of being disputed. In 2005 Williams was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and barred from practising pathology for three years. In July 2005 Meadow was removed from the Medical Register for serious professional misconduct and prohibited from practising medicine. Clark became an alcoholic as a result of her ordeal and died of alcohol poisoning in 2007. | ||||||
| 1996 | Donna Anthony | Murder of two babies | Somerset | Life | 6 years | Yes, 2005 |
| Anthony was wrongly jailed in 1998 for the death of her 11-month-old son, also because of the opinion of Sir Roy Meadow, and finally released in 2005. | ||||||
| 1996 | Victor Nealon | Rape | Redditch | Discretionary life sentence | 17 years | Yes, 2013 (no compensation) |
| Conviction quashed after an unknown person’s DNA was found on the woman’s clothes. Nealon was denied compensation. | ||||||
| 1997 | Siôn Jenkins | Murder | Hastings, East Sussex | Life imprisonment | 6 years | Yes*,[e] 2006 (no compensation) |
| Siôn Jenkins was acquitted in February 2006 after a second retrial of the 1997 murder of his foster daughter Billie-Jo Jenkins. He was convicted in 1998 but the conviction was quashed in 2004 following a CCRC referral. The basis of the quashed conviction at the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) were the concessions by the Crown’s pathologist that evidence given at the first tribunal were inaccurate. Jenkins has been denied compensation on the grounds that there is no evidence that proves his innocence.[174] | ||||||
| 1999 | Michael Weir | Murder | East Finchley, north London | Life imprisonment | 1 year | No (reconvicted in 2019) |
| Weir was (rightfully as it turned out) convicted of the murder of pensioner Leonard Harris during a burglary in 1998. In 2000 his conviction was quashed at the Court of Appeal on a technicality, and the Crown Prosecution Service missed the deadline to appeal to the House of Lords by one day. The Lords subsequently ruled that the quashing of the conviction was incorrect, but Weir could not at that point be retried. In 2019, after Weir’s DNA was found on items from the scene and his palmprint was also matched to prints on items, he was re-convicted in a double jeopardy case, becoming the first man to be convicted of the same crime twice and proving he was not innocent.[175] | ||||||
| 1999 | Angela Cannings | Murder of two babies | Salisbury, Wiltshire | Life | 2 years | Yes, 2003 |
| Angela Cannings was jailed wrongly for four years on the now discredited evidence of Sir Roy Meadow. | ||||||
| 1999 | John Corcoran | Murder of Helen Gorrie | Horndean, Hampshire | Life | 3 years | Yes, 2003 |
| 21-year-old Corcoran was jailed for the 1992 murder of 15-year-old Helen Gorrie. She had left her house one night to meet up with Corcoran, who she had only met the night before when he was cruising around the area in his car. She was found half-naked and strangled but not sexually assaulted at a spot popular with courting couples 10 minutes from her home, and police believed Corcoran had killed her after she rebuffed his sexual advances. He could not account for his movements for 40 minutes that night, when he had left his friends saying he had to meet someone. He was released on a technicality in January 2003 and moved back to Warren Park in Havant, but police revealed that there were no grounds to re-open the murder investigation. Officially, Gorrie’s murder remains unsolved.[176][177] | ||||||
| 1999 to 2015 | Sub-postmasters operating the Horizon computer system | Theft, false accounting and fraud | Around the UK | Various, usually fines and imprisonment lasting up to 12 years | Varies | Yes |
| In 1999 the UK Post Office introduced a computer accounting system named Horizon. By 2013 the system was being used by at least 11,500 branches, and was processing some six million transactions every day.[178][179] From 1999 onwards unexplained discrepancies and losses began to be reported by sub-postmasters. The Post Office maintained that Horizon was «robust» and that none of the shortfalls or discrepancies in sub-postmasters’ branch accounts were due to problems caused by Horizon.[180] Sub-postmasters unwilling or unable to make good the shortfalls were sometimes prosecuted (by the Post Office’s in-house prosecution team) for theft, false accounting and/or fraud. Between 1991 and 2015 there were 918 successful prosecutions.[181][182] These were largely private prosecutions by the Post Office relying on IT evidence alone, without proof of criminal intent. Public prosecutions also occurred in Scotland, Northern Ireland and in Crown Courts. Despite this, some sub-postmasters were successfully persuaded by their own solicitors to plead guilty to false accounting, on being told the Post Office would drop theft charges. Once the Post Office had a criminal conviction, it would attempt to secure a Proceeds of Crime Act Order against convicted sub-postmasters, allowing it to seize their assets and bankrupt them.[183] According to press reports, these actions by the Post Office caused the loss of dozens of jobs, bankruptcy, divorce, unwarranted prison sentences and one documented suicide.[184][185] | ||||||
| 2001 | Barry George | Murder | London | Life imprisonment | 7 years | Yes, 2008 |
| Barry George was cleared on August 1, 2008, of the 1999 murder of TV presenter Jill Dando after a retrial in which police were unable to rely on discredited forensic evidence. | ||||||
| 2004 | Sam Hallam | Murder | London | Minimum of 12 years’ imprisonment | 7 years | Yes, 2012 (no compensation) |
| Sam Hallam was wrongly jailed for life in 2005 for the murder of Essayas Kassahun. He was released in May 2012 after prosecutors told three senior judges that they would not oppose his appeal.[186] | ||||||
| 2011 | Ched Evans | Rape | Rhyl | 5 years | 2 years 6 months | Yes, 2016 |
| Evans, a professional footballer, was convicted in 2012 of the rape of a woman. In 2015 the Criminal Cases Review Commission referred the case to the Court of Appeal, having examined new evidence from two of the complainant’s previous sexual partners about her behaviour, which bore similarities to Evans’s account that the Commission decided «could not reasonably be explained as a coincidence». In 2016 the Court of Appeal quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial, at which Evans was found not guilty. | ||||||
| 2012 | Shirley and Lynette Banfield | Murder | Harrow, London | Life imprisonment | 1 year | Yes*,[f] 2013 |
| A mother and daughter who were convicted of the murder of their husband/father after it was found that they had financially gained from his disappearance in 2001, had tried to murder him on previous occasions, and had lied about seeing him in 2008. They pled guilty to fraud, forgery and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and were found guilty of the murder. They were released on appeal one year later, even though their defence said that the «likelihood» was that «one or other» of the women had murdered him, as they had been convicted under joint enterprise and the judges said that the case required the «application of the established law» and ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prove that they had both acted together to kill him.[187][188] |
United States[edit]
Due to the high number of documented notable wrongful conviction entries for the United States, the list can be viewed via the main article.
Vietnam[edit]
| Date of crime | Defendant(s) | Crime | Location | Sentence | Time served | Legally exonerated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| August 15, 2003 | Nguyen Thanh Chan | Murder of a woman | Me village in Nghĩa Trung, Bắc Giang, Northern Vietnam | Life | 10 years | Yes |
| Chan was arrested in 2003 for the murder of Nguyen Thi Hoan. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment and had to pay 35 million Vietnamese đồng (about US$1,600) to the victim’s family. His wife Nguyen Thi Chien continued to fight for his innocence and in July 2013 presented evidence to the courts showing that another man in the same commune, Ly Nguyen Chung, had committed the crime. Chung was arrested by the police and admitted the murder in November 2013. Chan was acquitted.[189][190] |
See also[edit]
- Prosecutorial misconduct
- Exculpatory evidence
- Innocence Project
- Race in the United States criminal justice system
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Innocent prisoner’s dilemma
- Miscarriage of justice
- False confession
- Overturned convictions in the United States
- Capital punishment debate in the United States
- List of exonerated death row inmates
- Wrongful execution
- Maurice Hastings
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Notes[edit]
- ^ Although she was released on appeal, the judges said that there was ample evidence to support the conviction and the technicality that had led to her successful appeal was something that a «few words could have cured».
- ^ Although Campbell’s murder conviction was quashed 11 years later, he then pled guilty and was convicted on the alternative charge of manslaughter at his retrial, and the time he had already served was then taken into account in his sentence. Therefore, he did not spend any time in prison wrongfully.
- ^ Although his murder conviction was quashed, he then pleaded guilty and was convicted of an alternative charge of manslaughter at a 1999 retrial. After his conviction in 2013 for the 1981 murder of Claire Woolterton, the trial judge said that his conviction for the Sainsbury killing should never have been downgraded to manslaughter, saying at his sentencing: «Had it been known in 1999 that you were responsible as well for the killing of Claire Woolterton, the prosecution would never have accepted your plea of diminished responsibility in relation to the killing of Deirdre Sainsbury. It is also unlikely that Dr Fenwick and Professor Fenton would have been able to support such a defence, given the content of Dr Fenwick’s report dated 5th November 2013 in which he said that if you were found to have killed Claire Woolterton «the fact that he had committed two similar crimes would significantly weaken the possibility that the factors that we determined about his epilepsy at Broadmoor Hospital could have played the central role that was suggested in the case of the Deirdre Sainsbury killing. If it is found that he was present and did carry out the earlier killing then this must raise questions about the significance of epilepsy in the second killing».
- ^ Although they were released by the Court of Appeal, the presiding judges said that they were not declaring them innocent, saying: «The case against all three appellants was formidable. The evidence against Rowe was overwhelming… For the better understanding of those who have listened to this judgment and of those who may report it hereafter this is not a finding of innocence, far from it.»
- ^ Jenkins was never found not guilty or acquitted by the Court of Appeal, but after juries failed to reach a verdict in two retrials and the Crown Prosecution Service declined to press for a further retrial, Jenkins was declared formally acquitted in consequence
- ^ Even thought the defence said that the likelihood was that «one or other» of the women killed the man, the Court of Appeal ordered their release as they had been convicted under joint enterprise, and there was insufficient evidence that both had committed the murder
Further reading[edit]
- Jed S. Rakoff, «Jailed by Bad Science», The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 20 (December 19, 2019), pp. 79–80, 85. According to Judge Rakoff (p. 85), «forensic techniques that in their origin were simply viewed as aids to police investigations have taken on an importance in the criminal justice system that they frequently cannot support. Their results are portrayed… as possessing a degree of validity and reliability that they simply do not have.» Rakoff commends (p. 85) the U.S. National Academy of Sciences recommendation to «creat[e] an independent National Institute of Forensic Science to do the basic testing and promulgate the basic standards that would make forensic science much more genuinely scientific».
Коротко о развитии мозга: биология добра и зла
Как говорит знаменитый приматолог и нейробиолог Роберт Сапольски, если вы хотите понять поведение человека и природу хорошего или плохого поступка, вам придется разобраться буквально во всем — и в том, что происходило за секунду до него, и в том, что было миллионы лет назад. Публикуем отрывок из его книги, где автор очень подробно рассматривает огромное количество факторов, влияющих на наше поведение, и пытаемся понять, как стадии развития мозга делают нас «плохими» или «хорошими».
Завершив путешествие на Планету подростков, вернемся к нашему повествованию. Поведенческий акт — хороший ли, плохой ли, сомнительный — произошел. Почему? Все эти нейроны и гормоны оставим в стороне, ведь обычно первым делом мы обращаем взгляд в детство.
Путь усложнения
Детство — это тот период, когда все аспекты и мыслей, и поведения, и эмоций постепенно усложняются. При этом важно, что усложнение происходит поэтапно, минуя последовательно стандартные единообразные стадии. Почти все исследования детского развития так или иначе ориентированы на эти стадии; их тематика касается: а) последовательности стадий; б) влияния опыта на скорость и гармоничность путешествия по дороге взросления; в) влияния особенностей прохождения этих стадий на личность будущего взрослого. Давайте начнем с рассмотрения вопроса, как нейробиология определяет природу постадийного развития.
Коротко о развитии мозга
Идея стадий развития мозга человека совершенно обоснована. Через несколько недель после зачатия волной формируются нейроны и мигрируют на положенные им места. Примерно через 20 недель обвально образуются синапсы — нейроны принимаются «разговаривать» друг с другом. Затем аксоны начинают заворачиваться в миелин, производное глиальных клеток (т.е. идет формирование «белого вещества»).
Формирование нейронов, миграция, образование синапсов происходят в основном в материнской утробe.
А миелинизация запаздывает: к моменту рождения вокруг нейронов миелина еще очень мало, особенно в эволюционно молодых участках мозга; как мы видели, миелинизация продолжается целых четверть века. Ее стадии и становление соответствующих функций стандартны.
Например, тот участок коры, который отвечает за восприятие речи, проходит миелинизацию несколькими месяцами ранее, чем ответственный за воспроизводство речи, — дети понимают речь раньше, чем начинают говорить.
Особенно важна последовательность миелинизации, когда дело касается самых длинных аксонов у нейронов, передающих информацию на большие расстояния. Таким образом, миелинизация способствует коммуникации разных участков мозга. Ни один участок не является изолированным «анклавом», и формирование соединительных линий передач — задача наипервейшей важности: как еще чердаку мозга — лобной коре, используя несколько миелинизированных нейронов, договориться с подвалами мозга, что пора научиться ходить на горшок?
Мы уже знаем, что у зародышей млекопитающих происходит перепроизводство нейронов и синапсов; нерезультативные и ненужные в результате отмирают и получаются более экономичные, практичные и эффективные контуры. При этом не будем забывать и одну из тем прошлой главы: чем позже взрослеет определенный участок мозга, тем меньше в его формировании участвуют гены и тем больше — среда.
Стадии
Каковы же эти стадии детского развития и как они помогают объяснить хорошее-плохое-среднее поведение взрослых, с разговора о котором началась глава и вся книга?
Прародителем всех теорий детского развития стал Жан Пиаже: в 1923 г. он сформулировал — после проведения хитроумных, красивых экспериментов — четыре стадии развития интеллекта у ребенка:
Сенсомоторная стадия (от рождения до ~ 24 месяцев)
Малыши приобретают знания только посредством чувственного опыта. В течение этого периода, обычно к месяцам, у них появляется понятие об объекте и «постоянстве объекта», т. е. осознание факта, что если предмет исчезает из их поля зрения, то он все равно существует — у ребенка сохраняется ментальный образ того, чего у него перед глазами уже нет.
Дооперациональная стадия (от ~ 2 до 7 лет)
У детей формируются устойчивые идеи об устройстве мира вне зависимости от того, есть ли сейчас перед их глазами непосредственный пример. Все больше развивается символическое мышление; все больше они играют в «давай, как будто». Их рассуждения в данный период интуитивны: нет пока логики, нет причин и следствий. Это та стадия, на которой дети еще не доходят до понимания «постоянства объема». Одинаковые пробирки А и Б одинаково наполняют водой. Потом из пробирки Б воду выливают в пробирку В, которая тоньше и длиннее. «В какой пробирке теперь больше воды?» — и ребенок на дооперациональной стадии, руководствуясь безыскусной логикой, скажет, что в В: ведь линия воды в пробирке В выше, значит, и воды больше.
Стадия конкретных операций (7–12 лет)
Дети думают логично, их уже не поймать на ерунде с разными пробирками. Тем не менее способность к обобщению у них еще сомнительная, еще не устоялась. Так же дела обстоят и с абстрактным мышлением — услышав, например, поговорку «Видно птицу по полету», они подумают, что нужно посмотреть, как птица летит, и тогда будет понятно, какая это птица. То есть пословицы они понимают буквально.
Стадия формальных операций (подростковый период)
На этой стадии происходит формирование взрослой степени абстракций, рассудительности, осознания и контроля собственной мыслительной и психической деятельности.
Другие аспекты интеллектуального развития тоже распределены по стадиям. На ранней стадии малыши учатся осознавать себя отдельной личностью, формируют границы собственного «Я»: «Это Я, а не кто-то другой». И вот что, например, случается, когда эти границы недостаточно прочные и ребенок не понимает, где «кончается» он и «начинается» мама: мама порезала палец, а он заявляет, будто пальчик болит у него.
Потом приходит время, когда дети начинают догадываться, что другие обладают отличной от их информацией. Девятимесячные детки смотрят туда, куда им указывает палец взрослого (обезьянки и собаки делают то же самое), т.е. следуют той информации, которая есть у взрослого, а у них нет. За этим действием будто бы стоит вопрос: «Где же та игрушка? На что мне показывают?» Те, кто постарше, используют подобные концепции в более общем плане, т.е. понимают, что у других людей и мысли другие, и убеждения, и знания, а это уже поворотный пункт в построении т.н. внутренней модели психического состояния другого человека.
Вот как звучат рассуждения ребенка, еще не имеющего этой модели. Взрослый и двухлетка наблюдают, как в коробку А кладут печенье. Взрослый уходит, а экспериментатор перекладывает печенье в коробку Б и затем спрашивает ребенка: «Где он (взрослый) будет искать печенье, когда вернется?» В коробке Б, скажет ребенок — он-то знает, где печенье, а что он знает, то знают и все остальные. Примерно в 3–4 года дети уже рассудят: «Он подумает — печенье в А, даже если я знаю, что оно не там, а в Б». Оп-ля! Вот вам и модель психического состояния.
Такова задача на «ложное знание», и способность с ней справиться отмежевывает важнейший этап развития. Модель психического состояния теперь может позволить себе такие изощренные вещи, как понимание иронии, виды на будущее или даже вторичную модель психического состояния (предположения о том, как человек А воспринимает человека Б).
В координации этой модели задействованы разнообразные участки коры: части медиальной ПФК (никто не удивился, да?) и некоторые новые игроки, включая предклинье в теменной доле, верхнюю височную борозду, височнотеменной узел. Знаем мы это по результатам нейросканирования тех пациентов, у которых нарушено функционирование модели психического состояния (у аутистов с сокращенной моделью психического состояния уменьшено количество серого вещества и снижена активность в верхней височной борозде). Еще мы знаем, что если временно дезактивировать височно-теменной узел, то испытуемые перестают понимать намерения других, когда выносят моральную оценку.
Таким образом, сначала идет стадия «отслеживания взглядом», затем стадия построения первичной внутренней модели психического состояния с последующим построением вторичной модели, потом развивается видение ситуации с точки зрения другого, причем скорость перехода от одной стадии к следующей зависит от среды и опыта (например, младшие дети в семье обретают эту модель раньше, чем более старшие или единственные дети в семье).
Конечно, идея постадийного развития интеллекта не единожды подвергалась критике. Один из пунктов этой критики имеет самое непосредственное отношение к теме нашей книги: модель Пиаже учитывает только интеллект, но игнорирует влияние социальных и эмоциональных факторов.
Один пример, который мы еще будем обсуждать в главе 12, касается детей на довербальной стадии развития, еще не имеющих представления о принципе транзитивности (если А>Б и Б>В, то А>В). Покажите картинку с нарушенной, «неправильной» транзитивностью между предметами на экране (предмет А должен бы в соответствии с размерами свалить предмет В, а происходит все наоборот), и ребенок не выкажет никакого недоумения, взгляд не задержится на картинке надолго. А теперь оживите предметы — пририсуйте им глазки и ротик, — и у малыша ускорится сердечный ритм, он займется разглядыванием картинки, будто бы говоря: «Существо В должно было бы отойти в сторонку, а не то существо А его свалит, а не наоборот». Дети осознают логические связи между людьми раньше, чем между предметами.
Конкретная социальная ситуация и интенсивность мотивации тоже могут сдвигать границы интеллектуальных стадий. Зачатки модели психического состояния хорошо прослеживаются в экспериментах с шимпанзе, которые общаются с другими шимпанзе (не человеком) или которых мотивируют тем или иным образом, например едой.
Чувства и эмоции также подстраивают интеллектуальное развитие под конкретные ситуации
Я наблюдал, как моя дочка поразительным образом продемонстрировала и модель психического состояния, и ее отсутствие одномоментно. Она перешла из одной начальной школы в другую и однажды отправилась навестить своих товарищей в прежней школе. Вот она стоит и вдохновенно рассказывает друзьям: «…А на перемене мы качаемся на качелях, там у нас такие качели есть. А потом мы идем обратно в школу, и Кэрол нам читает книжку». Модель психического состояния: «качаемся на качелях» — в старой школе не знают про качели, надо для них уточнить. Отсутствие модели психического состояния: «Кэрол нам читает книжку». Кэрол — учительница в новой школе; по идее, должна бы проявиться та же логика: нужно рассказать бывшим соученикам, кто такая Кэрол. Но поскольку Кэрол — это самая чудесная, самая замечательная на свете учительница, то модель психического состояния буксует. После этого я спросил дочку, почему она не сказала своим, кто такая Кэрол. «Все ее знают», — был ответ. Ну да, как же они могут ее не знать?
Чувствуя боль другого
Модель психического состояния подводит нас к следующей ступени: люди чувствуют не так, как я, включая и болезненные ощущения. Этого еще недостаточно для рождения эмпатии и сочувствия. В конце концов, социопаты, у которых патологически отсутствует эмпатия, великолепно используют эту модель и способны самым бессовестным образом манипулировать и прогнозировать чужие действия на три шага вперед. Строго говоря, для существования эмпатии необязательно понимать, что у других людей чувства отличаются от моих. Совсем еще маленькие детки на «домодельной» стадии развития демонстрируют зачатки ощущения чужого горя: малыш предлагает свою соску экспериментатору, старается успокоить его, когда тот изображает плач (это только самое зарождение эмпатии, ведь малыш еще не может себе представить, что кого-то можно утешить не соской, а другим, пока незнакомым малышу способом).
Да, это самое-самое начало эмпатии. Может, кроха и вправду глубоко сочувствует. А может, ему просто не нравится, что взрослый плачет, и тогда попытки его утихомирить будут небескорыстными. Детская способность к эмпатии (со-чувствию) проходит от этапа ощущения боли другого как своей, потому что другой — это и есть я, к этапу со-переживания боли другого, потому что он — как я.
Нейробиология детской эмпатии все это хорошо объясняет. В главе 2 мы разобрали, что если взрослый человек видит боль другого, то у него в мозге активируется передняя поясная кора. То же самое происходит и в миндалине, и в зоне островка, особенно в случае с намеренным причинением боли — отсюда ярость и отвращение. В работу включились разные участки префронтальной коры, в том числе и «эмоциональная» вентромедиальная ПФК. Когда мы видим, что другому больно (например, если ему укололи иголкой палец), у нас в ответ включается совершенно определенная, «заместительная», реакция: активируются центральное серое вещество (ЦСВ — отдел, отвечающий за восприятие нашей собственной боли), участки сенсорной коры, куда приходит информация от наших собственных пальцев, и моторные нейроны, которые командуют их движениями. И вот у нас самих непроизвольно дергаются пальцы.
Исследования Жана Десети из Чикагского университета продемонстрировали, что когда семилетки наблюдают чью-нибудь боль, то у них сильнее всего активируются вполне определенные участки — это ЦСВ, сенсорная и моторная кора. При этом активация вмПФК минимальна, когда максимально возбуждение ЦСВ, т. е. две эти структуры функционально связаны. У детей постарше вмПФК функционально связана с повышенной активацией лимбических структур. А к подростковому возрасту более сильная активация вмПФК соотносится уже с теми участками мозга, которые вовлечены в работу модели психического состояния. Что же происходит? Эмпатия переходит от конкретного личного мира, где «у нее болит палец, а я неожиданно ощущаю свой собственный», к миру другого человека, где главное — его чувственный опыт, не мой.
Эмпатия совсем маленьких детей не различает, нечаянно или нарочно причиняется увечье, человеку или предмету нанесен ущерб
Они только со временем постигают эту разницу, как раз к тому моменту, когда снижается роль той части эмпатии, за которую отвечает ЦСВ, и в действие вступают вмПФК и участки, ответственные за модель психического состояния. Более того, целенаправленный вред теперь активирует миндалину и островок — и мы получаем гнев и отвращение к виновнику. В это же время дети учатся различать самовредительство и вред, нанесенный им кем-то другим.
Система усложняется: примерно к семи годам дети уже умеют выражать сочувствие. Между 10 и 12 годами появляется эмпатия генерализованная и абстрактная — сочувствие к «беднякам», а не к какому-то конкретному бедному человеку (обратная сторона медали: тот же процесс ответственен за появление у детей негативных стереотипов).
Тогда же начинает развиваться чувство справедливости. Дошкольники в массе эгалитаристы («раз у меня есть печенье, то пусть будет и у него»). Но еще до того, как детское ощущение равенства превратится в безграничную щедрость юности, формируется склонность к группированию: «Мы все равны, но с незнакомым ребенком мы равны меньше».
Дети с возрастом все с большей готовностью реагируют на несправедливость, т. е. когда с кем-то поступили нечестно. Но, как обычно, пока эта способность не сформируется полностью, она проявляется с различными отклонениями. Четырех–шестилетние дети, в какой бы культурной среде они ни воспитывались, дают негативную реакцию, когда нечестно поступают с ними лично. И лишь после достижения восьмилетнего возраста (некоторые подходят к этому этапу только к десяти годам) они начинают заступаться за несправедливо обиженных других. Данная стадия может вообще не наступить, и это уже зависит от культуры, в которой воспитывается ребенок. Ощущение справедливости у маленьких детей очень сильно завязано на себя.
Вскоре после того, как у детей появляется негативная реакция на несправедливое обхождение с другими, они начинают пытаться исправить этот непорядок («Ему вчера мало досталось, нужно дать побольше сейчас»). Но уже в предподростковом возрасте эгалитаризм уступает место признанию неравенства, которое теперь оправдывается теми или иными качествами, усилиями или каким-то высшим благом («Пусть она играет чаще, чем он, потому что она вообще лучше/больше тренировалась/важнее для команды»). Некоторые даже способны на самопожертвование во имя общего блага («Пусть она играет, она лучше меня»). К подростковому возрасту мальчики принимают идею неравенства с большей готовностью, чем девочки, просто с чисто утилитарных позиций. И мальчики, и девочки допускают неравенство как социальный договор: «Так уж устроено, ничего не попишешь».
Моральное развитие
По мере развития модели психического состояния, умения видеть точку зрения других людей, все более тонкой настройки эмпатии ребенок начинает сражаться с вопросами, что такое хорошо и что такое плохо.
Пиаже специально акцентирует внимание на том, как с помощью игры дети вырабатывают правила допустимого поведения (детские правила могут отличаться от взрослых) и как придумыванием правил отражается усложнение стадий детского развития. Это наблюдение заставило одного молодого психолога приглядеться внимательнее к данной области исследований — и как оказалось, с далеко идущими последствиями.
В 1950-х гг. Лоуренс Колберг, тогда еще студент старших курсов Чикагского университета, а позже профессор в Гарвардском, начал эпохальный труд по формулированию стадий морального развития.
Детям предлагали обдумать морально-этические дилеммы. Вот пример. Одну женщину может спасти от смерти только определенное лекарство, причем всего одна таблетка. Но она стоит невероятно дорого. Позволительно ли женщине украсть эту таблетку? Почему?
Колберг пришел к заключению, что моральное суждение — это интеллектуальный процесс, построенный на рассуждениях, которые с возрастом постепенно усложняются. Он выделил три уровня морального развития, каждый с двумя стадиями.
Вам говорят, что вкусное печенье, стоящее на столе прямо перед вами, есть нельзя. Вы его съедите? Приведу донельзя упрощенные стадии рассуждений, которые формируют решение.
Можно ли съесть печенье? Доконвенциональное суждение
Стадия 1. Зависит от обстоятельств. Могут ли меня наказать? Накажут — это неприятно. Агрессия обычно достигает кульминации между двумя и четырьмя годами, после этого детские порывы уже обуздываются взрослыми с помощью наказаний («Отправляйся в угол!») или своими же товарищами (например, «Мы с тобой не дружим»).
Стадия 2. Зависит от обстоятельств. Если я послушаюсь и не съем, меня похвалят? Похвалят — это приятно.
Обе стадии эгоцентричны, основное здесь — послушание и собственные интересы («А что мне за это будет?»). Колберг обозначил возрастные рамки этого уровня примерно восьмью — десятью годами
Волноваться о ребенке нужно в том случае, если агрессия, особенно с элементами измывательств, не утихает к указанному возрасту — тогда можно предположить увеличение в будущем риска взрослой социопатии (или, по-другому, формирования антисоциальной личности). Главное в поведении таких будущих социопатов — невосприимчивость к негативной реакции окружающих на их действия. Как мы уже говорили, у социопатов высокий болевой порог, чем объясняется отсутствие у них эмпатии: если не чувствуешь свою боль, то и чужую не почувствуешь. Это также помогает понять их невосприимчивость к негативной реакции окружающих: зачем же менять поведение, если наказание даже не ощущается?
На рассмотренных стадиях дети начинают мириться после ссор и получать удовлетворение от того, что помирились (в частности, при этом у них снижается выработка глюкокортикоидов и уходит тревога). Подобная награда сулит личную (нейробиологическую) выгоду, поэтому определенно стоит помириться. Удовольствие от примирения можно увидеть и с другой стороны — со стороны прагматической выгоды: дети с большей готовностью улаживают конфликты с людьми, имеющими отношение лично к ним.
Можно ли съесть печенье? Конвенциональное суждение
Стадия 3. Зависит от обстоятельств. Если я съем, то кое-кому не достанется. А он/она мне нравится? А как бы поступили другие? Что про меня подумают, если я съем? Заботиться о других — это хорошо; приятно, когда меня считают хорошим.
Стадия 4. Зависит от обстоятельств. Что говорит закон? Можно ли его нарушать? А что если все нарушают этот закон? Порядок — это хорошо. Вот у нас есть судья, и у него дело о грабительских, но законных процентах по кредиту, и он думает: «Мне жалко всех этих пострадавших… но я здесь сижу для того, чтобы решить, нарушил банк закон или нет… а банк закона не нарушал».
Конвенциональное моральное суждение относительно (оно касается ваших взаимодействий с другими и их последствий). Большинство подростков и взрослых находятся на этом уровне.
Можно ли съесть печенье? Постконвенциональное суждение
Стадия 5. Зависит от обстоятельств. Откуда на столе появилось печенье? Кто решил, что мне нельзя его есть? Спасет ли чью-то жизнь, если я съем печенье? Хорошо, когда четкие правила можно гибко приспосабливать к обстоятельствам. Тогда бы наш судья думал так: «Да, банк законов не нарушал, но ведь законы существуют, чтобы защищать слабых от сильных, и тогда не столь важно, подписан или не подписан кредитный договор, банк постановим закрыть».
Стадия 6. Зависит от обстоятельств. Что важнее — закон или мои собственные моральные принципы по данному вопросу? И если что случится, готов ли я отвечать за свои принципы? Прекрасно осознавать, что на свете есть вещи, о которых я буду петь снова и снова: «Меня не собьешь с пути, я твердо стою на своем…».
Этот уровень по сути своей эгоистичен, т.к. правила его рождаются изнутри и отражают работу собственной совести; каждый проступок требует конечной стоимости — необходимости жить в мире с самим собой после этого
На этом уровне приходит осознание, что быть хорошим и подчиняться закону — не одно и то же. Как пел Вуди Гатри в песне «Pretty Boy Floyd»: «Я уважаю порядочного человека по ту сторону закона и терпеть не могу негодяев, законов придерживающихся».
Стадия 6 эгоистична еще и потому, что строится на самоуверенности, готовой растоптать конвенциональных законопослушных мещан и прочих педантов-крохоборов, мелких людишек, бредущих, как стадо, за пастухом, да и самого пастуха и т.д. Рассуждая о постконвенциональном уровне, часто цитируют Эмерсона: «…Всякий героический поступок измеряется своим презрением благ внешних». Суждения стадии воодушевляют. Но они же одновременно могут стать невыносимыми, поскольку подразумевают, что «быть хорошим» и «быть законопослушным» — вещи несовместимые. По словам Боба Дилана, «нужно быть честным, чтобы жить вне закона».
Последователи Колберга считают, что почти никто не в состоянии постоянно существовать на стадиях 5 и 6.
Колберг фактически создал научный подход к изучению морального развития у детей. Его постадийная модель настолько укоренились в рядах специалистов-человековедов, что психологи уже обиходно употребляют выражения типа «он до сих пор барахтается на первой колберговской стадии».
Понятное дело, к работе Колберга есть определенные претензии.
Самое очевидное. Нельзя воспринимать постадийную модель слишком буквально: существуют исключения, переходы от одной стадии к другой определены не жестко, на индивидуальном уровне стадии зависят от контекста.
Опасность ограниченного видения ситуации и неправильных акцентов. Изначально Колберг использовал нерепрезентативную выборку, т.е. изучал только американцев, а мы увидим из следующих глав, что моральные суждения имеют значительные межкультурные различия. Кроме того, все испытуемые были мужского пола, и это заметила в 1980 г. Кэрол Гиллиган из Нью-Йоркского университета. Колберг и Гиллиган пришли к согласию относительно последовательности основных стадий развития. Но Гиллиган с коллегами скорректировала картину, показав, что, в отличие от мальчиков и мужчин, женщины и девочки, вынося моральное суждение, ценят заботу выше справедливости. В результате женщины более склонны к конвенциональному типу мышления и его акценту на взаимоотношениях, тогда как мужская часть населения предрасположена к постконвенциональным абстракциям.
Упор на рассудочность. Что является результатом моральных суждений — интеллектуальные рассуждения или интуиция и эмоции? Колберг и его последователи считали, что интеллект. Но из главы мы узнаем, что множество организмов с ограниченными интеллектуальными возможностями, включая маленьких детей и обезьян, демонстрируют зачатки чувства справедливости. Подобные эксперименты дают основание сформулировать концепцию «социального интуитивизма» по отношению к процессу принятия морально-этических решений. Над ней работали Мартин Хоффман и Джонатан Хайдт, оба из Нью-Йоркского университета. Естественно задать следующий вопрос: как сочетаются моральные рассуждения и моральная интуиция? Нам предстоит увидеть, что: а) моральная интуиция не есть продукт эмоций, а является другим типом интеллектуального осмысления; б) напротив, моральные рассуждения часто вопиюще нелогичны. (Внимание: не отвлекаемся!)
Отсутствие предсказуемости. Можно ли, опираясь на все эти выводы, предсказать, кто будет стоять на своем ради правого дела, а кто нет? Кто готов подставить голову ради обличения коррупционеров, кто кинется усмирять душегуба, кто займется устройством беженцев — неужели отличники колберговских моральных суждений? И вообще, забудем про героизм: будут ли наши отличники более честными в таких малозначимых ситуациях, как психологические эксперименты? Одним словом, могут ли моральные суждения определять моральные действия? Редко. Как мы увидим в главе 13, распрекрасная сила воли лобной коры имеет мало отношения к моральному героизму. На самом деле такое случается, когда «правое дело» не очень затратно.
Самые яркие судебные ошибки в истории
21.08.2011
Как бы это было не печально, но есть такие проступки судей, которые известны всему миру ввиду их масштабности. Такие дела было невозможно скрывать, именно поэтому они получили огласку. А сколько судебная система РФ и всего мира скрывает подобных ошибок? И, к сожалению, презумпция невиновности не останавливает служителей Фемиды и они, подчас исключительно резко и безосновательно вершат «правосудие», ломая жизни и наказывая невиновных.
Стефан Кишко: жестокий приговор невиновному
Одним из самых жестоких приговоров в Великобритании стало наказание в виде пожизненного лишения свободы Стефану Кишко, 23-летнему налоговому служащему.
Его обвиняли в убийстве 11-летней девочки Лесли Молсид, тело которой было найдено с многочисленными ножевыми ранениями. Доказательства следователей были основаны на показания подростков, которые утверждали, что Кишко занимался перед ними эксгибиционизмом. Кроме того, невинное, даже детское хобби Кишко – записывать номера машин, которые его раздражали, дало следователям лишнюю почву для предположений.
После ареста обвиняемому долгое время не говорили о его праве на адвоката, молодой человек просил, чтобы на допросах присутствовала его мать, но в просьбе ему было отказано. Следователи обещали Кишко отпустить его домой, если тот признает свою вину.
Все улики и факты, доказывающие невиновность Кишко замалчивались и не предавались огласке, так, суд не принял во внимание алиби обвиняемого, который находился в художественном центре во время убийства, кроме того, излишний вес и недавний перелом ноги не позволил бы Кишко забраться на пригорок, где было найдено тело девочки. А самое главное – анализы семенной жидкости обвиняемого не совпадали с образцами, взятыми с одежды погибшей девочки.
Полиция, следователи и суд не отклонялись от своей версии и не рассматривали другие варианты событий, что стало огромной ошибкой. Собрав необходимое количество доказательств, дело передали в суд. С перевесом в 8 голосов 21 июля 1976 года присяжные заседатели вынесли свое решение – виновен в убийстве на сексуальной почве. Кишко был приговорен к пожизненному заключению, его выставили монстром, детоубийцей. В адрес осужденного сыпались бесконечные оскорбления и угрозы. В тюрьме на Кишко несколько раз покушались другие заключенные, пытаясь наказать его за убийство девочки.
Мать незаконно осужденного долго добивалась пересмотра дела, но власти всеми силами пытались замалчивать дело и не позволить матери Стефана Кишко добиться пересмотра, поэтому только в 1991 году дело подняли из архивов.
Суперинтендант Тревор Уилкинсон сразу же нашел в деле множество ошибок, увидел абсолютную невиновность Кишко в связи с медицинским заключением и алиби. В августе 1991 года дело было передано в апелляционный суд, после чего Кишко оправдали. Все трое судей, которые присутствовали на заседании, не имели возражений против освобождения Кишко. Мужчина был освобожден, только, увы, он не смог наслаждаться свободой из-за прогрессирующей шизофрении и стенокардии, которые начали развиваться еще в тюрьме. Освобожденный Кишко получил небольшую часть из обещанной государством суммы, так как в скором времени скончался в возрасте 41 года. За сломанную жизнь Кишко получил лишь несколько обвинений, да и то не от всех, кто приложил к этому руку. Настоящий преступник был арестован 5 ноября 2006 года.
По мотивам трагической истории сняты фильмы «Жизнь за жизнь» и «Настоящее преступление: 30-летня тайна».
Стивен Траскотт
Не менее шокирующий и резонансный случай с судебной ошибкой произошел в Канаде в 1958 году. Тогда Стивен Траскотт, которому на момент предъявления обвинения было всего 14 лет, был приговорен к смертной казни за изнасилование и убийство своей одноклассницы, Линн Харпер. Невиновность Траскотта был доказана лишь в 2007 году.
Тело девочки было найдено в лесу, а 14-летний парень признался, что за несколько дней до убийства он катал девочку на своем велосипеде., также, по словам Траскотта, он видел, как Линн Харпер садилась в машину. Однако, парню не поверили и суд присяжных признал его виновным и приговорил к повешению. Позже казнь была заменена на 10 лет тюрьмы.
В 1969 году Стивен Траскотт вышел на свободу, по прежнему утверждая свою невиновность. Он не раз публично говорил об этом, что повлекло за собой многочисленные публикации в СМИ. В 2006 году дело было пересмотрено и обвинительный приговор отменен. За незаконное преследование Траскотту выплатили 6,5 миллионов евро. В Канаде это дело является одним из самых громких и скандальных примеров судебной ошибки. Настоящего преступника так и не нашли.
По мотивам истории Траскотта был написан роман «The Way the Crow Flies», автором которого стала Анна-Мари Макдоналд.
Дело Михасевича
«Призовые» места занимают ошибки российских судей.
«Витебское дело» не только унесло жизни 36 женщин, которые стали жертвами маньяка Михасевича, но и незаконно осудило 14 граждан РФ, которые не были причастны к убийствам.
Одного из осужденных «маньяков» расстреляли, другой в местах лишения свободы потерял зрение, еще один покончил с собой. Так или иначе, но из-за несовершенства судебной системы РФ 14 непричастных к убийствам людей провели в тюрьме длительное время. Один из осужденных, Олег Адамов, из 15 лет лишения свободы, к которым приговорил его суд, провел за решеткой без малого два года, получил компенсацию в виде однокомнатной квартиры и денежных средств, однако, извинений так и не дождался.
Магнитский
Наиболее громкое незаконное преследование современности – это арест и заключение Сергея Магнитского, сотрудника фонда Hermitage Capital.
Гражданин РФ был заключен под стражу и скончался в СИЗО «Матросская тишина». Магнитского обвиняли в хищении средств из государственного бюджета на сумму более 5 миллиардов рублей, а также в уклонении от уплаты налогов. Позже выяснилось, что необходимых для ареста причин у правоохранительных органов не было, да и дело было «шито белыми нитками», однако гражданин РФ расплатился своей жизнью за ошибку представителей судебной системы.
В деле Магнитского много неточностей и умолчаний, и по сей день «всплывают» подробности дела. Защитники прав человека со всего мира обеспокоены этой проблемой, так, последняя из новостей по этой теме – список сенатора Кардина. Этот список включает в себя фамилии российских чиновников, которым запрещен въезд в США. Российские власти пытаются отвечать на такие выпады, однако это больше похоже на детские перепалки типа «сам такой».
Ходорковский и Лебедев
Стоит ли говорить об аресте Михаила Ходорковского и Платона Лебедева? На данный момент нет официальных доказательств их незаконного ареста и осуждения, однако, практически ежедневно в прессе появляются новости по их делу. Про Ходорковского и Лебедева не написали ни одной книги, и не сняли ни одного фильма, однако, вся страна следит за их жизнью в новостных лентах и делает свои выводы.
Вместо заключения
Сейчас проводятся судебные реформы, российские власти создают видимость активных действий в правовой и судебной сфере, однако «воз и ныне там», ведь сами служители Фемиды говорят о бесполезности каких-либо изменений и законопроектов, так как есть определяющая сила – власть, которой подчиняется Верховный Суд, которому подчиняются все суды страны. Поэтому быть судам и дальше марионетками в руках «верхов».
Материал подготовила Валентина Таранина
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