Friday Roundup: The Feeling of Freedom

It was a week of exonerations across the United States, and it brought big victories for clients of Innocence Network member organizations.

Kenneth Granger was set free in Philadelphia Wednesday

after spending 28 years behind bars for a crime evidence now shows he didn’t commit. Attorneys at the Innocence Project of Pennsylvania (an Innocence Network member) uncovered evidence of Granger’s innocence last year that they say was disclosed to Granger’s defense team before his trial in 1982.

In Washington State,

two men were cleared

after DNA tests pointed to their innocence of a 1993 rape. Alan G. Northrop and Larry W. Davis were represented by the Innocence Project Northwest, also an Innocence Network member. Davis was freed in January and Northrop in April, but the two men were officially cleared on Wednesday.

Yesterday, Kentucky Innocence Project client Michael VonAllmen was

fully cleared

of a 1982 rape for which he served 11 years in prison. DNA testing conducted in the case had come back inconclusive, but investigators turned up other evidence in the case pointing to VonAllmen’s innocence. The Kentucky Innocence Project is also an Innocence Network member. The Texas Tribune ran a feature this week on the

12,300 hours of student work

that have been critical to bringing about exoneration in the state.

Two Japanese men convicted of a murder and robbery in 1967

are being retried

based on evidence that their convictions were based on false confessions.