Darlie Routier was convicted in 1997 and sentenced to death in Texas for the 1996 stabbing death of her 5-year-old son Damon. Darlie’s 6-year-old son Devon was also murdered during the attack, but prosecutors chose to withhold charges for Devon’s murder in case Darlie was acquitted, as there is no statute of limitations for murder in Texas. Evidence shows that Devon and Damon were murdered by an intruder. Darlie Routier is innocent.
Injustice Anywhere added Darlie’s case to our featured case list in April 2014. Darlie currently has a dedicated group of supporters that we are happy to join forces with. The wrongful conviction of Darlie Routier must not stand. We will be updating this section in the near future.
ROCKFORD, Ill. (WIFR) — John Horton, a Rockford man who spent more than 20 years in prison before he was exonerated, received his certificate of innocence.
Judge Joseph McGraw granted the certificate of innocence Monday afternoon, according to a representative from the Exoneration Project.
“I thought that once I got exonerated that there was nothing that would top that,” Horton said. “I learned today that a certificate of innocence tops that.”
Horton was arrested for armed robbery and the murder of Arthur Castaneda on Sept. 25, 1993. He was later sentenced to life in prison for the murder in 1995.
In October, Clifton English testified solely for a robbery and murder connected to Horton’s former charges at a Rockford McDonald’s in 1993. English is currently serving time on another murder in custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Horton was released on bond in February 2017, and he was dismissed on all charges in November 2017.
JACKSON, Miss. — A judge ruled Monday that a Mississippi man should spend the rest of his life in prison after the state Supreme Court ordered a review of evidence that he shook an infant to death.
Adams County Circuit Judge Forrest Johnson resentenced Jeffrey Havard to life in prison without parole. The move came after Johnson overturned Havard’s death sentence in September but refused to order a new trial, disappointing lawyers who say evidence of a murder is weak.
Havard, now 40, says he accidentally dropped his girlfriend’s baby, 6-month-old Chloe Madison Brittin 2002, causing her to hit her head on a toilet. His lawyers said that since Havard was convicted, physicians have changed their opinion about such injuries.
One of the state’s witnesses in the original trial was pathologist Steven Hayne, whose autopsy work and testimony has been the subject of repeated challenges across Mississippi.
During a 2017 hearing, Hayne testified that he still believed Britt’s death was a homicide, but he also testified that he’d now describe the death as “abusive head trauma.” In 2009, the American Academy of Pediatrics advised physicians to describe certain head injuries to infants. Other experts, though, testified during the 2017 hearing that they didn’t believe shaking alone could cause death.
Defense lawyers also wanted the court to reconsider the forensic evidence surrounding claims that Havard sexually assaulted the infant. Johnson, though, refused to let such testimony go forward.
In his September ruling, Johnson wrote that there’s too much other evidence of Havard’s guilt to overturn his conviction, including conflicting statements he gave. In one statement, he said he didn’t know who or what caused the girl’s injuries, while in a second statement he told police she fell, that he dropped Britt while bathing her and then shook her.
Lawyers for Havard last week filed notice with the state Supreme Court that they’re appealing Johnson’s decision to affirm Havard’s conviction.
Despite upholding the verdict, Johnson set aside the death penalty, writing that “while the evidence presented by the petitioner is not sufficient to undermine this court’s confidence in the conviction, there is a cautious disturbance in confidence of the sentence of death, even if slight.” That left life without parole as Johnson’s only option under a capital murder conviction.
COLUMBIA, Mo. – Five years after Ryan Ferguson walked out of prison after winning a lengthy court battle for his freedom, Charles Erickson is now asking for his.
Erickson, 34, has filed a petition in Pike County, where his prison is located, that alleges Boone County prosecutors and Columbia police coerced him into confessing to the murder of Columbia Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt on Halloween night 2001. Read more >>
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – On his last day as governor, Eric Greitens commuted sentences and issued pardons in what he said is the ability to make wrong things right.
Our news cameras were there when Rodney Lincoln was released from prison after spending more than three decades behind bars for a crime he said he did not commit.
Lincoln, 73, said he received a personal phone call from Greitens on Friday morning with the news. DNA evidence and eyewitness testimony were used to convict Lincoln back in the 1980s, but it was discovered years later the DNA evidence was wrong and the eyewitness, who was a child at the time, recanted her testimony as an adult.
Lincoln has been in prison for the murder of JoAnne Tate and for attacking her two daughters with a knife. Melissa DeBoer, the victim’s daughter, recanted her testimony after watching an episode of “Crime Watch Daily “that featured the case. It suggested that serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells might have been the suspect. After watching the show, she said she had flashbacks and realized he was, in fact, the man who killed her mother.
DeBoer said, as a child, she felt a great responsibility to catch the bad man who killed her mother. She said she wanted to please detectives in the case and as a child, she felt manipulated to say the killer was Lincoln.
Tricia Bushnell, the executive director of the Midwest Innocence Project, released a statement Friday, saying, in part:
“Mr. Lincoln walks out of prison a free and innocent man, whether the courts recognize it or not. This is a big step toward justice, but until his conviction is overturned, justice is yet again denied.”
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, courts in the United States overturned 139 wrongful convictions in 2017. Sixty percent of the exonerations in 2017 were a result of official misconduct. That is the highest number of convictions overturned because of misconduct ever to be documented in a calendar year. It is disturbing to know that honesty and integrity could have prevented so much pain and suffering.
Over the past quarter century, America has incarcerated more people than any civilized nation on earth. A disturbing number of those incarcerations have been wrongful convictions. Hundreds of exonerations can be credited to advanced DNA technology. But research on topics like, bite mark evidence, fire investigation technology, and shaken baby syndrome, have all played a significant role as well. The ability to distribute information via the internet has also proven to be an invaluable resource when fighting wrongful convictions.
Exoneration statistics show that we are on the right track, but we have a long way to go. We need to correct the mistakes we have made, all while working to reforming the system which allowed those mistakes to occur in the first place. Sadly, the wrongful conviction problem is far more pervasive than most people realize, and even with increased interest, most cases continue to lack the attention they warrant. Many innocent people remain in prison. They need others to be their voice. Please join us in the fight to free the innocent.
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ON DECEMBER 29, more than a decade after she was first sent to prison in Nevada for a murder she did not commit, Kirstin Blaise Lobato saw the charges against her dismissed. “It is the end to her nearly 17-year nightmare,” said Vanessa Potkin, director of post-conviction litigation for the Innocence Project, which took on Lobato’s case. “It’s over.”
Lobato was twice convicted of the gruesome murder of a 44-year-old homeless man named Duran Bailey, whose body was found behind a dumpster off the Las Vegas Strip just after 10 p.m. on July 8, 2001, covered in a thin layer of trash. Bailey’s teeth had been knocked out and his eyes were bloodied and swollen shut; his carotid artery had been slashed, his rectum stabbed, and his penis amputated. It was found among the trash nearby.
Despite a crime scene rich with potential evidence, Las Vegas detectives Thomas Thowsen and James LaRochelle ignored obvious leads and instead focused their investigation on 18-year-old Lobato, based solely on a third-hand rumor. Read more >>
The time has come once again for the annual Jamie Snow Postcards in the Park event. The event, which is now in its seventh year, is hosted by Free Jamie Snow and Justice for Illinois Wrongfully Convicted. This year’s event will take place on Sunday, September 3rd, 2017. The location remains the same. Supporters will meet once again in Miller Park, in Bloomington, Illinois, from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm.
Jamie Snow was wrongfully convicted in 2001 for the 1991 murder of William Little, a gas station attendant in Bloomington, Illinois. Jamie is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in Stateville prison in Joliet, Illinois.
Jamie Snow has proclaimed his innocence from day one. In the years following his conviction, new information has come to light clearly showing that police misconduct and bad lawyering sent the wrong man to prison for Little’s murder. Jamie Snow is innocent.
Jamie Snow’s supporters have worked diligently to keep the spotlight on his case. The postcard event has successfully drawn the attention of the media each year. This year’s postcards will be sent to Elizabeth Vargas from 20/20.
Since Anthony Ray Hinton was exonerated and released from death row over two years ago, Alabama lawmakers have not only refused to compensate him for the three decades he spent on death row for a crime he did not commit, but also passed legislation changing the appeals process in death penalty cases so that innocent people like Mr. Hinton now face an even greater risk of being executed.
One of the longest serving death row prisoners in Alabama history and among the longest serving condemned prisoners to be freed after presenting evidence of innocence, Mr. Hinton became the 152nd person exonerated from death row since 1983 when he was released on April 3, 2015.
Alabama law provides that compensation may be awarded to a wrongfully incarcerated person if the Committee on Compensation for Wrongful Incarceration finds that he meets the eligibility criteria, but applying for compensation is often a meaningless exercise because the statute requires a legislative enactment to appropriate the necessary funds. Mr. Hinton’s application was approved by the committee, and this session, State Senator Paul Bussman sponsored a bill to appropriate the funds to compensate Mr. Hinton. The bill never even made it out of committee. Read more >>
CHICAGO — The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, June 22nd affirmed a decision by a judge to overturn Brendan Dassey’s conviction, according to Dassey’s attorney. The three-judge panel said Dassey was coerced into confessing and should be released from prison.
Dassey’s attorney, Steven Drizin, posted to Twitter Thursday indicating the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a decision by Judge Duffin — 2-1.
Drizin said “This round goes to Brendan Dassey 2-1,” with Judge Hamilton dissenting.
“The decision of the district court is affirmed, with costs, in all respects. The writ of habeas corpus is granted unless the State of Wisconsin elects to retry Dassey within 90 days of issuance of this court’s final mandate, or the Supreme Court’s final mandate. The above is in accordance with the decision of this court entered on this date.”
Duffin on November 14th ordered the release of Dassey, ruling he be freed under the supervision of the US Probation Office after overturning his confession in August — saying investigators coerced Dassey, who was 16 at the time, and suffered from cognitive problems, into confessing.
The time has come once again for the annual Jamie Snow Postcards in the Park event. The event, which is now in its seventh year, is hosted by 
