In an emotional hearing Friday, a Philadelphia judge vacated Ogrod’s death sentence and convictions for the 1996 murder of 4-year-old Barbara Jean Horn. He walked free after 28 years behind bars.
Unrequited Innocence
Mississippi high court orders retrial for death row inmate convicted on debunked bite-mark evidence
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Eddie Lee Howard has spent 26 years on death row based largely on now-discredited forensic evidence. Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court vacated his conviction and ordered a retrial.
News
Philadelphia DA: Death row inmate Walter Ogrod “likely innocent”
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Larry Krasner’s office has asked the court to clear the conviction and sentence of Ogrod, who has served nearly three decades in prison for the murder of a 4-year-old girl.
Alabama Prison Crisis
Secret report: Alabama guards allegedly beat, hog-tied, ignored inmate who later died
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Alabama investigators detailed the brutal events that led to Billy Smith’s death — including dousing him with water while unresponsive and a nurse who refused to treat him.
Events
Year in review: Injustice Watch’s biggest stories of 2019
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As 2019 ends, we wanted to take this opportunity to highlight stories we’ve published that have had the biggest impact and resonated the most with readers.
Commentary
5 big ideas to stop sentencing innocent people to death
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How can courts stop sentencing innocent people to death? Our Unrequited Innocence project highlighted some potential solutions.
News
Damien Wayne Echols: DNA testing contradicted false confession
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The nude, bound and mutilated bodies of three eight-year-old Cub Scouts were found in a water-filled ditch in a forest near their West Memphis, Ark., homes, one day after they disappeared in May, 1993.
News
Kimber Edwards: Accused of involvement by actual killer, who later recanted
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After police in University City, Missouri, found Kimberly Cantrell shot to death in August, 2000, suspicion quickly fell on her ex-husband, Kimber Edwards, who had been charged with failing to make child support payments.
News
Kevin Cooper: Nearly a dozen judges find case suspicious
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In a wealthy neighborhood of ranches thirty miles east of Los Angeles, a home was broken into in the early morning hours on a June night in 1983 and three members of the family, along with a family friend, were brutally killed.
News
Robert M. Kubat: Key evidence of innocence withheld at trial
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In June, 1980, a Lake County, Illinois jury sentenced a truck driver named Robert M. Kubat, who had been in and out of prison for years, to death after convicting him of the murder of Lydia C. Hyde, 63.
News
Jarvis Jay Masters: Accuser’s description of Masters matched inmate who confessed
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Jarvis Jay Masters remains on death row, accused of murdering a corrections officer at San Quentin prison in 1985.