Wrongful Conviction

Following in the footsteps of his beloved and iconic grandfather, Ndaba Mandela has taken the torch of social justice and run with it. Today, Nelson Mandela’s legacy continues as Ndaba keeps its beacon of hope bright, fueling his message that one person can make a difference. In this candid interview, Ndaba discusses his passion for criminal justice reform and his commitment to a new generat...

In her new book Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction , Lara Bazelon makes a powerful argument for adopting a model of restorative justice as part of the innocence movement so exonerees, crime victims, and their communities can come together to heal. Tony Wright is one of those exonerees. Tony endured two trials and 25 years in prison before a jury found him not guilt...

In forty-eight other states and in federal courts across the country, a conviction requires a unanimous vote – all jurors must agree on whether a prosecutor has met the burden of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Louisiana is the only state where someone can be sentenced to life without parole without a unanimous decision of a jury. Non-unanimous juries allow conviction even where two...

In this special edition of Wrongful Conviction , Jason Flom is joined by Sadhguru to discuss his revolutionary work that has helped reform prisons throughout India. Sadhguru is a yogi, mystic, visionary and bestselling author who ranked amongst the 50 most influential people in India by India Today . He has been conferred the Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India in 2017, the highest civilian...

On July 5, 2000, Ricardo Aguilera was shot and wounded in a gang related drive-by shooting in Los Angeles, California. Several witnesses identified 25-year-old Rafael Madrigal Jr. in a photo lineup as either the shooter or driver of the car involved.  Those witnesses testified against Rafael at trial. Rafael, who maintained his innocence throughout the ordeal, had been at work at Proactive Pa...

As a teenager, Damien Echols along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley—known as the West Memphis Three—was convicted in 1994 of killing three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, AK. There was no DNA linking the WM3 to the crime, and some of the DNA found at the crime scene even seemed to implicate the stepfather of one of the victims. The case gained national attention soon after the...

Noura Jackson was egregiously framed and wrongfully convicted of murdering her mother, Jennifer Jackson, in Memphis, TN in 2005. Amazingly, she spent over three years in jail awaiting trial before being sentenced to 20 years and nine months in prison. No physical evidence linked Noura to the murder, and DNA testing not only excluded her as a suspect, but it also suggested that two or three differe...

It’s been over 10 years since the murder of Meredith Kercher, British exchange student killed while studying abroad in Italy. That crime sent an innocent American student named Amanda Knox to prison for four years. At just 20 years old Amanda Knox became embroiled in an international scandal that captivated the world. The guilty verdict at Amanda’s initial trial and her 26-year sentenc...

Susan King served nearly seven years behind bars for a crime she didn’t commit. In November 1998, a fisherman found the body of 40-year-old Kyle Breeden in the Kentucky River. He had been shot in the head twice with .22 caliber magnum bullets and his legs were bound with guitar amplifier cord. The crime went unsolved for eight years until May 2006, when Kentucky State Police began re-investi...

Kim Kardashian West first heard about Alice Marie Johnson through a short video about Johnson’s life behind bars on Twitter. Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old-great-grandmother, was given a life sentence for a first time-nonviolent-drug-related crime and was not eligible for parole. At the time, Johnson had already been in prison for 21 years. Kardashian West retweeted that video from Mic.c...

It’s been almost 30 years since the brutal rape and beating of the Central Park Jogger that sent five innocent men to prison—they were known as the Central Park Five. This case and their stories captivated New Yorkers. This season we heard from one of the five: the incredible Yusef Salaam. But the first guest on Wrongful Conviction was Raymond Santana, and as the sixth season of Wrongf...

In 1999, Luis Vargas was convicted and sentenced to fifty-five years to life in prison for three sexual assaults. He was accused of being the notorious “teardrop rapist,” a methodical serial rapist that terrorized women in Los Angeles. The real “teardrop rapist” would attack over 30 victims. Luis Vargas is joined by his lawyer, Justin Brooks, director of the California Inno...

Since his release in April 2018, Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill is using his voice and freedom to fight on behalf of those still behind bars. In this special interview, Meek Mill is joined by his friend and ally Michael Rubin, e-commerce billionaire and co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers, to discuss their hopes for criminal justice reform. https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/with-jason-flom W...

On December 27, 1996, 35-year-old Tyrone Camp was fatally shot in the head and back as he was warming up his truck at Active Transportation Co. in Louisville, KY. The murder was witnessed by Kenneth Brown, who told police he had seen the assailant running away, but that he could not identify him. The focus shifted to Kerry Porter, who had also once been married to Camp’s wife, after the vict...

Calvin Johnson was 25 years old when he was wrongfully convicted for the rape of a woman in 1983, and he served 16 years for that crime. In 1999, a judge ordered a new trial for Calvin and DNA tests were done on samples collected from the rape kit. The DNA testing concluded that Calvin was not the perpetrator, and the District Attorney decided to drop the charges against him. Calvin Johnson was th...

On January 11, 1988, Fitzgerald Clarke and Steven Hewitt were fatally shot in Brooklyn, NY outside of a building where they sold drugs. Shabaka Shakur, a friend of both victims, was brought in for questioning after a witness told officers that Shabaka harbored a dispute over money he owned Hewitt. Another witness told police that Shabaka admitted to committing the crime before he was arrested, but...

On June 29, 1998, three men committed an armed robbery at a Fidelity Financial institution in Fullerton, CA. Two bank employees chose Guy Miles from faulty photo arrays and later testified that he was one of the robbers in court. Guy had six alibi witnesses at trial who all testified that he was in Las Vegas–an almost four-hour drive away–when the robbery occurred. He was convicted of...

De’Marchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott were 17 years old when Tulsa police arrested them in connection to a gang-related shooting that killed 19-year-old Karen Summers, the mother of a 4-month-old baby, outside a house party in 1994. Neither teen was found with the murder weapon or the getaway car and no DNA linked either of them to the crime scene. Days after the murder occurred, a Tulsa ho...

In 1998, Peter Ouko was taken to Kamiti Maximum Prison in Kenya and was sentenced to death in 2001. His sentence would later be commuted to life imprisonment by Kenya’s former President Mwai Kibaki in 2009. Instead of bitterness, Mr. Ouko decided to forgive his tormentors and make the best of his time in prison, becoming the first inmate to graduate with a University of London Diploma in Law...

In March 1988, Steven Barnes was arrested and charged with the rape, sodomy, and murder of 16-year-old Kimberly Simon in upstate New York. He was tried by a jury in Utica beginning on May 15, 1989. Questionable eyewitness identifications and three forms of unvalidated forensic science were used against Steven at trial, and he was convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to 25 years to life in pr...

Calvin Buari served 22 years for a double murder in the Bronx, even though someone else confessed to the crime. In the early 1990s, Calvin Buari was a well-known crack cocaine distributor in the Bronx, and authorities blamed him for a spasm of bloodshed there; the press reported that he practiced "black magic" and was a murderous thug. In 1992, a disgruntled drug associate who had recently shot Ca...

Andre Hatchett spent half of his life in prison for a murder he did not commit largely due to inadequate defense, a single unreliable witness, and exculpatory evidence that was not disclosed to the defense. He was the 19th person to be exonerated under Brooklyn D.A. Ken Thompson's Conviction Integrity Unit. Andre Hatchett is joined by Senior Staff Attorney at the Innocence Project Seema Saifee and...

Angel Cordero was convicted in 1999 of attempted murder and robbery of then-Boston University freshman Jason Mercado, who was attacked and stabbed by strangers while walking in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx. Four plainclothes Bronx Gang Unit cops driving by the scene observed the tail end of the assault and quickly arrested five men out of the crowd, including Angel Cordero, who at age 26 h...

In December 1979, a triple murder shook the small town of St. Albans, WV. John Moss III was convicted in 1983 and sentenced to life in prison, and he has since served 38 years for this crime that he did not commit. Jason Flom teams up with Georgetown University Professor of Government and Law, Marc Howard, and his student, Jessica Scoratow, to interview John Moss from behind bars in West Virginia...

Rodney Roberts was arrested in 1996 in Newark, NJ, after an altercation with a friend. After several days in custody, he found himself charged with the kidnapping and rape of a 17-year-old girl. His court appointed attorney advised him to plead guilty or spend the rest of his life in prison. Rodney had a good job and had recently moved with his young son into a new apartment. Hoping to get back to...