Wrongful Conviction

Time is running out for Melissa Lucio. We must act now! Melissa Lucio had 12 children with twins on the way, when the family was moving to a new apartment at the behest of Child Protective Services. A set of rickety exit stairs was high on the list of reasons, and a history of inter-sibling violence was well documented. Melissa's youngest, 2 year old Mariah, fell down those rickety stairs during t...

On July 17, 1973, 40 year old father of two and local chef Ting Fong Chan was beaten and stabbed to death on his way home from his night shift in Manitoba, Winnipeg, CA. A witness saw silhouettes of 4 or 5 men with long hair. Under the assumption that the men were Native American, police began to canvas the local indigenous population. A man named Adam Woodhouse told investigators about a recent g...

In the fall of 1984 and spring of '85, a serial rapist struck at least 4 times with eerily similar details. Meanwhile, a new student, Tim Cole, arrived on campus for the spring semester after the rapes had already began. On March 24th, 1985, a 20 year old student reported what appeared to be the 5th attack. Investigators collected a rape kit, and the victim helped them put together a composite ske...

In the early morning hours of April 27, 1982, 35 year old JoAnn Tate was stabbed in the chest and sexually assaulted while in her apartment in St. Louis, MO. Her 7 year old daughter, Melissa, was stabbed several times, and her 4 year old daughter, Renee, had her throat cut. The girls survived the attack, but their mother did not. For a while, Melissa had said that a man named Bill was the attacker...

In December of 1988, 18 year old Londoner Raphael Rowe was living with 5 other men in social housing, when four violent robberies shocked Southeast England, leaving eight victims in their wake. One was killed and another was severely injured. The assailants' MO was to steal the victims' cars, ditch them at the next crime scene, and repeat the process. Twelve people in the area of the first abandon...

On February 12th, 1990, a tragic accident occurred in which it is believed that Kathy Middleton mishandled a gun in her left hand, accidentally shooting herself one time in the head. The state turned this tragedy into a homicide investigation, sending her husband Ken Middleton to prison for life plus 200 years. In 2004, Ken had an opportunity to present to his motion trial court evidence of ineffe...

When 43 year old bowling alley manager Ken Wyniemko ejected an off duty cop from his establishment for drunk and disorderly conduct, he didn't think it would lead to a wrongful conviction. On April 30th, 1994, a woman was blindfolded and raped by a masked man in her home in Clinton Township, Michigan. The composite sketch was deemed only 60% accurate, but nonetheless, was made available to the med...

At 18, Clinton Young was the youngest and newest member of a group of four acquaintances after he was released from juvenile prison in 2001. One of the four men killed two people and went to the police to control the narrative. The other two joined the murderer's story, throwing Clinton under the bus. Despite evidence pointing away from Clinton, the 3 men's false testimony was enough to get Clinto...

Successful businessman and Ecuadorian-American immigrant Nelson Serrano was in Atlanta on December 3rd, 1997, when 4 people were murdered execution stye at his Bartow, Florida factory. It is believed that the intended target was his business partner, Phil Dosso’s son Frank who worked for the business while also involved in drug trafficking. After 3 years of cooperating with an investigation...

In 1988, 16 year old Felix Valentin was shot in his car in an alley on the West Side of Chicago. Before slipping into a coma and eventually death, he was able to identify his shooter and the getaway driver, 2 members of the Imperial Gangsters. An 11 year old eyewitness named Orlando Lopez initially identified Jacques Rivera, a member of the Latin Kings. Shortly after, Lopez realized his mistake, b...

On November 27, 2005, Catherine Woods was found viciously stabbed to death in her Upper Eastside apartment. At the time, her ex boyfriend David Haughn stayed on her couch while she was romantically involved with Paul Cortez. When David discovered this other man, he was jealous and upset, yet Haughn did not become the prime suspect despite damning evidence against him. A confluence of racism, a fal...

43 year old Jerome Loach was performing in a play at a church in South Philadelphia, PA on the evening of January 10, 2009. At the same time, police responded to a home invasion, in which three women were confronted at gunpoint by men posing as pizza deliverers. Two men were arrested, but a third man was implicated – Jerome. While the incriminating statement was recanted before trial, it was...

Stephanie Spurgeon was a married mother of two who had been running a daycare facility from her home for 15 years. On August 21, 2008, Stephanie took care of 1 year old Maria Harris for the first time. Maria’s grandmother picked her up that day, but soon noticed Maria was unresponsive. After 8 days in the hospital, Maria passed away. Since Stephanie was the last supervisor of the child, she...

On August 10th, 1994, a man and a woman were in a van in West Philadelphia, when two males approached. One blocked the passenger door, while the other shot the man before he could get out of the van. The witness identified 16 year old Johnny Berry from a photo, but rescinded the ID at a preliminary hearing. Inexplicably, Johnny was re-arrested and sent back to juvenile detention, where he met Tauh...

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 taken into police custody even though the eyewitness description should have excluded him as a suspect. 3 wi...

On October 11th, 1990, former New Haven, CT alderman Ricardo Turner and his lover were shot dead in their bed. Detective Vincent Raucci knew just who to pin it on, a small-time dealer named Scott Lewis. To make the case, Raucci attempted to extract false testimony from Scott’s friend Stefon Morant. When Stefon refused to go along with the scheme, Raucci pinned the murder on Stefon as well, e...

In just the first month of 1984, five women from the ages of 18 to 20 were sexually assaulted in East Richmond, Virginia. One victim saw an 18 year old named Thomas Haynesworth while he was walking to his local grocery store and called the police naming him as her attacker. Thomas was eventually convicted for three of the sexual assault incidents and sentenced to a total of 74 years in prison. Eve...

Amanda Brumfield, the estranged daughter of actor Billy Bob Thornton, was blamed for the death of her best friend’s daughter. On October 3, 2008, 1 year old Olivia Garcia had been sleeping in her playpen at Amanda’s house, when she woke up at around midnight and attempted to crawl out of her crib. Olivia fell from the rails and landed head first on the floor. She died a few hours later...

On April 5th, 1990, Bernhardt and Cora Hartig, both 81, were shot to death in their Atwater, OH home with a .25 caliber gun. Miles away, 18-year-old Tyrone Noling was involved in two non-violent robberies – in one, he stole a .25 caliber gun and in the second, it accidentally discharged, hurting no one. This gun, however, was not the Hartig murder weapon, and despite other, more viable suspe...

On December 20, 1987, at about 2 am, two masked men forced their way into a Burger King in Brooklyn, New York, as employees were closing. A third man entered the restaurant at some point, and they blindfolded and raped an 18-year-old female employee and forced a male employee to participate. The three assailants fled with $3,000 in cash. Both employees reported the crime as involving three assaila...

Brothers, Dennis and Lee Horton, were having a pleasant Memorial Day in 1993 until they decided to visit their father in North Philadelphia and ran into a childhood friend, Robert Leaf. Unbeknownst to the Hortons, Robert Leaf had committed an armed robbery turned homicide earlier that day. Shortly after Robert joined the brothers in their car, police pulled them over. All three were arrested and t...

In early May of 1977, Keith Laborde and his 14 year old twin cousins, Karen and Sharon Sanders, allegedly picked up a hitchhiking black man at a gas station in Avoyelles Parish, Louisiana. About 2 weeks later, when asked about a scratch on his neck, Keith Laborde and the twins told a story about this armed hitchhiker who allegedly forced Laborde into the trunk and raped both girls. Despite not mat...

On the morning of December 29th, 1991, the body of a 36 year old woman was found nude in the men’s restroom of the bar where she worked in Phoenix, Arizona. She had been assaulted and fatally stabbed. No semen was left behind. With DNA testing in its infancy, serology could only show that any blood or saliva at the crime scene matched the victim’s blood type. There were, however, what...

On January 6th, 1990, a 21 year old woman was working at a convenience store in Covington, Georgia. At around 4am, this woman, who we'll refer to as "BT," was abducted, forced into a truck, and sexually assaulted until she managed to escape 90 minutes later. Despite BT’s insistence that she hadn’t known the perpetrator, police ultimately persuaded her to believe a story that her ex-boy...

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...