Page 50 - Wrongful Convictions News Today

Anthony Porter, an Illinois death-row exoneree whose case sparked a chain of events that ultimately led the state to abolish the death penalty, has died. He was 66 years old. In 1983, Porter was convicted and sentenced to death of the murder of two teenagers in a southside Chicago park. No physical evidence linked him to the murders, but after more than 17 hours of coercive interrogation, another man, William Taylor, told police that he had seen Porter commit the murders. Porter came within 5...

Criminal justice advocates rallied and delivered a letter to Gov. Cooper Friday petitioning him to issue a pardon to Dontae Sharpe, who spent 24 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Sharpe, who’s Black, was convicted of the 1994 murder of a George Radcliffe, a 34-year-old white, Greenville man, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. He was 19 when the jury sent him to prison in 1995. Evidentiary hearings during Sharpe’s appeals later uncovered inconsistencies in the...

The Atlantic Most people on death row are guilty. That doesn’t mean they deserve their fate. The Atlantic. If you want to believe that Roger Coleman was the man who raped and murdered 19-year-old Wanda McCoy, his sister-in-law, on the night of March 10, 1981, in her small home in the coal-mining town of Longbottom, Virginia, you have to accept that Coleman managed to park his truck, ford a creek, scramble up some 300 yards of hillside, and commit the entire grisly crime in the span of 30 minu...

American teacher did not get a fair trial and Washington should lobby for his release, the Foley Foundation says.

Springfield, Ill. (AP) — Illinois became the first state Sunday to pass a bill that will ban police from lying to youth during interrogations — a practice that adds significantly to the risk of false confessions and wrongful convictions. It is expected to be signed into law by the governor in coming weeks. The original […]

Illinois has become the first state to pass a bill that will ban police from lying to youth during interrogations -- a practice that adds significantly to the risk of false confessions and wrongful convictions

Illinois has become the first state to pass a bill that will ban police from lying to youth during interrogations.

The legislation both a near-unanimous vote in both chambers, making the state one step away from banning the practice that contributes to false confessions.

SPRINGFIELD, Illinois (AP) — Illinois became the first state Saturday to pass a bill...

What did District Attorney Mark Dupree know about what was going on in his own office?