On March 10, 2015, Angel Gonzalez was exonerated after serving over 20 years in prison for a rape that he did not commit.

In 1994, Mr. Gonzalez was misidentified as the attacker when police used a highly unreliable and suggestive identification procedure. After he was arrested, he was misled by police into signing a false confession. Despite having four alibi witnesses testify in his defense in court, Mr. Gonzalez was wrongly convicted of aggravated sexual assault and aggravated kidnapping and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Although Mr. Gonzalez maintained his innocence from the beginning, it wasn’t until 2013 that he was finally able to prove his innocence through DNA testing. Today, he is a member of the Innocence Project’s Exoneree Advisory Council.

In May 2017, Carlos Sanchez was released after spending nearly 25 years — more than half of his life — in prison for a murder he maintains he did not commit.

Mr. Sanchez was only 17, when, after an eight-hour interrogation by police without a lawyer or guardian present, he signed a confession taking responsibility for the 1992 murder of his girlfriend. The confession was the only evidence linking him to the crime, and it was obtained under conditions now known to be associated with false confessions. The statement was also at odds with physical evidence collected in the case.

In January 2017, Mr. Sanchez was granted parole. He is still fighting to prove his innocence.

On April 3, 2003, Eddie Lowery had his conviction vacated and his case dismissed after spending nine years in prison for a rape he did not commit.

In July 1981, a 74-year-old woman was attacked while sleeping in her home in Ogden, Kansas. Mr. Lowery was brought in for questioning and was interrogated all day without food so that police could procure a confession. Although he later recanted the statements, he was wrongly convicted in 1982 based on the confession and the misapplication of forensic science.

In 2002, Mr. Lowery was able to procure DNA testing on the biological evidence, and in September of that year, DNA test results confirmed his claim of innocence.

On Jan. 24, 2019, Huwe Burton was exonerated after spending 19 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.

At 16 years old, Mr. Burton was convicted of the 1989 murder of his mother, who had been found stabbed to death in their New York City home. His conviction was largely based on a false confession that had been coerced by detectives.

A joint reinvestigation between the Innocence Project and the Bronx District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit uncovered that detectives from New York’s 47th precinct had coerced Mr. Burton into falsely confessing. Furthermore, additional new evidence surfaced about an alternate person who committed the crime. Ultimately, Mr. Burton carried his wrongful conviction for nearly 28 years before he was exonerated.

On Jan. 24 2017, Johnny Hincapie was exonerated in New York after spending 25 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.

Mr. Hincapie was wrongly convicted in 1991 largely based on a coerced confession, police misconduct, and inadequate defense. In 2013, Mr. Hincapie’s attorneys filed a post-conviction petition for a new trial, presenting new witness testimony confirming he was not involved in the murder. In 2015, a New York judge conducted a series of evidentiary hearings on the petition and later overturned Mr. Hincapie’s conviction. Two years later, prosecutors dismissed the charges.

Today, Mr. Hincapie, a gifted speaker, shares his powerful story and educates audiences across the United States on coerced confessions and criminal justice reform.

On Dec. 19, 2002, Korey Wise — a member of the Exonerated Five — had his conviction overturned in New York after wrongly serving 11.5 years for a rape he did not commit in Central Park in 1989.

Mr. Wise, along with Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, and Raymond Santana, was wrongly convicted in 1990 based on false confessions and the misapplication of forensic science. At the time of their arrest, they were between 14 and 16 years old. In 2002, the actual attacker, who had already been serving a sentence for a series of rapes, murder, and robbery, confessed that he alone had committed the 1989 rape. DNA testing was then conducted on the crime scene evidence and corroborated the attacker’s confession.

Twenty years after Mr. Wise’s exoneration, the entrance to Central Park where he and the other members of the Exonerated Five had entered on the night of the attack was renamed the Gate of the Exonerated in their honor.

Chris Fabricant is the director of strategic litigation (Joseph Flom Special Counsel) at the Innocence Project. In this role, he leads the Innocence Project’s strategic litigation department, whose attorneys develop and execute national litigation and public policy strategies to address the leading causes of wrongful conviction. 

Chris is one of the United States’s leading experts on forensic sciences and scientific litigation. Prior to joining the Innocence Project, he was a longtime public defender and law professor. He frequently serves as a public speaker on law reform issues, and is widely published in both legal scholarship and in mainstream media. In his new book, Junk Science and the American Criminal Justice System, Chris examines the role that faulty scientific evidence has in continuing and strengthening an unjust and racial biased criminal legal system.

On Sept. 12, 2014, Michelle Murphy was exonerated of the murder of her son after wrongly serving 20 years in prison.

Ms. Murphy was wrongly convicted in 1995 based on a coerced confession and misleading forensic evidence. In 2014, the Innocence Project joined her defense team and requested DNA testing, which revealed the DNA profile of an unknown male. Following that testing, the prosecution agreed to vacate her conviction and dismiss the charges.

Ms. Murphy is one of 15 women exonerated in the United States with the help of post-conviction DNA testing — and the first and only woman in Oklahoma to be exonerated by DNA testing.