Wrongful Conviction

On March 16, 1989, Lloyd Witter and Jomo Kenyatta sustained several gunshot wounds at a residence in Jamaica, Queens. Witter died from his injuries. Paul Anderson, who also lived at the residence, was found handcuffed near Witter’s body. Under questioning, both Kenyatta and Anderson provided at least a half dozen different versions of the story that finally landed on Carlton Roman as the gun...

On January 24th, 2007, Keith Washington, a police officer and former Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army, was home with his wife and 6 year old daughter while they awaited a delivery from Marlo Furniture store. Two men, Robert White and Brandon Clark, arrived with the furniture, and while showing them to the master bedroom, Keith realized that White had broken away and was snooping in his daughter...

Atif Rafay was a thriving, brilliant, and happy student who had just finished his freshman year at Cornell University. On a weekend trip in July of 1994, while visiting his family in Bellevue, Washington, Atif Rafay’s mother, father, and sister were all brutally murdered in their home. Investigators targeted Atif and his best friend, Sebastian Burns, because they were ‘acting strangely...

This is a re-release of an episode that originally aired on October 2, 2019. In 2006, 16 year old Wisconsin special education student Brendan Dassey gave a videotaped confession to the murder of a young woman named Teresa Halbach. Brendan recanted his confession immediately, but was still convicted and sentenced to life in prison even though there was no evidence connecting him to the crime and th...

On November 6th, 1991, William Catlett was shot and killed on a street corner in West Philadelphia. Nearly all eyewitnesses identified a man named Edward “P-nut” Johnson as the shooter. Instead of following those leads, investigators coerced a witness to blame Eric Riddick a childhood friend of Catlett. The witness recanted in 1999, but Riddick was not told about it until 2003, long af...

19 year old Anthony Klann was stabbed to death in Cleveland, Ohio in September of 1988. Two men who had a lot to gain worked with detectives to spin a narrative, claiming two other men, Joe D'Ambrosio and Michael Keenan, committed the murder on September 22nd; however, Anthony Klann was still very much alive the following night. Learn more and get involved at: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/u...

3 Chicago teenagers went to a party at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater where embarrassment turned a consensual encounter into a far-fetched gang rape accusation wrapped up in well-worn racist tropes. Three radically different outcomes for each young man only served to underscore the absurdity of this tragic failure of our justice system. Jarrett Adams’ book Redeeming Justice: https://...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 21, 2021. On May 18th, 1998, Charlie Winbush told her fiancé, Julius Graves, that a man named Li Run Chen, who worked at a Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood had touched her inappropriately. Graves replied that he would scare him. Later that day, Julius Graves, his fiancée's cousin, and another younger friend had a few...

Sometimes when detectives can't get a confession they'll settle for a something else Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin explore the story of Emerson Stevens, a fisherman from Virginia’s Chesapeake Bay. When a young mother was found murdered, it seemed all the evidence pointed to Emerson, until the case fell apart when a key witness was convicted of lying about the case and a forensic test technique wa...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on January 15, 2020. In this live audience recording at ComplexCon Chicago 2019, Patrick Pursley tells us how a false identification, a coerced and immediately recanted statement, and false expert testimony led to his wrongful conviction. Amazingly, Patrick Pursley spearheaded changes to the law while still in prison in order to obtain the ballistic...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on May 20, 2020. On July 28th, 1999, Julius Jones was playing monopoly with his family and soon to be a sophomore on an academic scholarship at the University of Oklahoma. That night, a man named Paul Howell was shot for his GMC Suburban in the nearby suburb of Edmund, Oklahoma. A few days later, Julius was awakened and dragged out of bed, barefoot...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on September 14, 2020. In June 1986, Kevin Dykes witnessed the attempted murder of 2 people and the actual murder of a 3rd person in his neighborhood in Compton, CA. Kevin decided to go to the police, partly out of fear of reprisals by the killers who knew he witnessed the murder. The prosecutors then used his knowledge of the crimes that he witness...

James King has been sitting in prison for almost 25 years for a rape that he adamantly maintains he did not commit. His conviction strongly relied on the inconsistent and contradictory word of a then 13-year old girl who was allegedly hiding her inappropriate relationship with a neighbor twice her age. Despite the lack of material evidence, changed testimonies for the prosecution, and the credible...

At about 9:40AM on March 19th, 2010, John Jones woke to find his daughter Jada unresponsive and called 9-1-1. She was rushed to the hospital where she remained until July 16th, 2010, when she was removed from life support and passed away. Based on the junk science of shaken baby syndrome, John was convicted of murdering his daughter and sentenced to 15 years to life. Greg Glod, Criminal Justice Fe...

On September 26th, 1989, Kevin Jones and a friend drove to an apartment with $40,000 cash to buy cocaine. Jones went inside, while the friend waited down the block. Almost two hours later, the friend saw Jones’ car approaching him, but Jones was not in it. Jones was later found dead, wrapped up, beaten and shot, in the trunk of that car. Troy Coleman, the owner of the apartment, was 60 miles...

Joe Bryan was a high school principal, and his wife Mickey Bryan was a 4th-grade teacher in the small town of Clifton, TX. On Tuesday, October 15th, 1985, Mickey did not show up for work. Her body was discovered later that day in her bedroom. Joe was 120 miles away in Austin at a conference at that time. Prosecutors came up with a theory that Joe drove back to Clifton, killed his wife, and returne...

On July 16, 1996, the owner of Tardy Furniture Company and three employees were found shot and killed. Curtis Flowers, who previously worked at the store, was charged with four counts of capital murder. Even though no physical evidence linked him to the crime, District Attorney Doug Evans used coerced and incentivized witnesses and racially discriminatory jury selection to send Curtis to Death Row...

At age 13, Marcus Wiggins became one of many young black men to be tortured into a false statement by sadistic Chicago PD Detective Commander Jon Burge and his “Midnight Crew.” When an eyewitness foiled their first frame job, Marcus’ mother Carolyn successfully sued and exposed these men, leading Burge’s underlings to embark on a vendetta to frame Marcus Wiggins for murder....

On January 7th, 1997, the owner of the Best Budget Inn in Oklahoma City was beaten to death with a baseball bat at his motel by admitted killer, thief, and methamphetamine addict Justin Sneed. Mr. Sneed, fearful of the death penalty, falsely accused his boss, Richard Glossip, of masterminding the murder for hire plot in exchange for leniency. Now, Richard sits on death row in Oklahoma where his ti...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on July 29, 2020. On the night of April 25th, 1976, a wealthy, 54 year old widow was burglarized and sexually assaulted in Concord, North Carolina. Police and prosecutors then conspired to elicit a mistaken witness ID, mishandle and suppress evidence, commit perjury and ignore alibis to wrongfully convict Ronnie Long and send him to prison for 44 ye...

Jason Flom (“Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom” podcast) and Rabia Chaudry (“Undisclosed" podcast) got together to create a series of PSAs on how to safely respond to encounters with the police. The PSAs cover a variety of different encounters and may save your life. Please listen and share. The information and opinions shared here are not intended to be, and should not be cons...

On February 17th, 2007, paramedics were dispatched to a residence where they found an unresponsive two-year-old child who subsequently died. Evidence of abuse led to the arrest and conviction of Melissa Lucio, the child’s mother. She was sent to death row where she remains to this day. The DA on the case has since been found to be corrupt and is himself serving 13 years in prison for accepti...

Jason Flom (“Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom” podcast) and Rabia Chaudry (“Undisclosed" podcast) got together to create a series of PSAs on how to safely respond to encounters with the police. The PSAs cover a variety of different encounters and may save your life. Please listen and share. The information and opinions shared here are not intended to be, and should not be cons...

This is an updated episode that originally aired on August 12, 2020. On January 24th, 2004, a party at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple devolved into violence, resulting in one man’s death. Before the violence erupted, an overserved young man left the party into the care of his new girlfriend - only to become the murder suspect on the word of his jilted ex. Despite zero physical evidence and an u...

Jason Flom (“Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom” podcast) and Rabia Chaudry (“Undisclosed" podcast) got together to create a series of PSAs on how to safely respond to encounters with the police. The PSAs cover a variety of different encounters and may save your life. Please listen and share. The information and opinions shared here are not intended to be, and should not be cons...