The number of US citizens that have been convicted of crimes they didn’t commit is staggering.
There are currently 2,086 exonerated convictions, totaling over 18,060 lost years and an unknowable number of innocent people ripped apart from loved ones.
Lives have been destroyed and in some cases people have died behind bars, all the while knowing that they are innocent.
We take a look at a number of exonerated cases, the length of sentence given and the length of time served.
In some cases, innocent people served longer than they were sentenced.
A number of these cases spent years on death row, never truly knowing when they would die.
These were innocent people let down by the judicial system built to protect them.
We explore a number of these incredible stories beneath our infographic in more detail.
Cathy Woods
Cathy was convicted of the murder of Michelle Mitchell, a student whose car had broken down and was waiting for her mother. When Michelle’s mother turned up, she found no sign of her daughter. Police later found Michelle’s body in a nearby garage. The only evidence found was a cigarette butt and witnesses saw a man fleeing the area at around the time of the murder.
In 1979, Cathy Woods, a patient at a mental hospital, told a staff member that she killed a girl named Michelle in Reno. Cathy went to trial in 1980, where the prosecution relied on her confession and records showing Cathy working in Reno at the time. In 1980, Cathy was convicted of murder.
In 2013, after requesting additional DNA testing, no link was found to Cathy, but a male profile was identified. It wasn’t until 2014, when a recently uploaded DNA profile matched the case and linked Rodney Halbower to the cigarette butt, that Cathy was exonerated.
Kirk Odom
In 1981, a young woman was attacked at her apartment by a stranger with a gun. She viewed him briefly in the dim light of the streetlamps as he entered a window before she was gagged, bound, blindfolded and raped.
Talking to Odom about an unrelated matter, a police officer thought he resembled the sketch of the assailant and passed on the information. The victim identified Odom, who was asked to take part in a line-up, from an image.
At trial, Odom and his mother both testified that he was at home when the crime occurred. The evidence consisted of testing a hair using an unreliable method. After deliberating for only a few hours, the jury convicted Odom.
Odom was released on parole in 2003 and made to register as a sex offender. In 2011, after the exoneration of another case using similar microscopy methods, Odom’s case was re-examined and DNA testing found him innocent.
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Source: JurisOffice Legal Directory, February 12, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
