Wrongful Conviction

On the morning of August 4, 1992, a man and his wife discovered the body of 31-year-old Vernon Huggins while walking their dog in Toledo, OH. He had been savagely beaten to death. Toledo police investigated the crime but after three months, the case was labeled inactive. In December of that same year, the case was reopened after a call was made to Crime Stoppers. The police interviewed members of...

On July 23rd, 1991, Carlos Torres and Charles Rivera were shot and killed while in a car in North Philadelphia, PA. One witness who later recanted identified Pedro Reynoso as the shooter. Despite 2 alibi witnesses, travel documents and pictures showing that Pedro was in the Dominican Republic at the time of the shooting, he was charged, convicted and sentenced to life without parole. To learn more...

On Saturday, June 16, 2007,  Adrien Jackson and Tierra Pressley where shot multiple times outside of the Off Broadway Lounge in Camden, NJ at around 2:30am. Adrien survived but Tierra died at the hospital that same night. Initially, Adrien Jackson could not identify the assailant. But almost a year later, he speculated that Manfred “Baby J” Younger might have been shooter. Despite...

One day in May of 1992, 19-year-old Eron Shelman was driving around Detroit, MI with three of his buddies. Eron was at the wheel with his friend Antonio Knight beside him when suddenly, a shot rang out, and Antonio fell over, dead. “I almost crashed the car,” Eron recalls. “I had my dearest friend laying in my lap, bleeding out the back of his head.” Despite someone else co...

On January 18, 1995, 38-year-old Denise Raymond, a Federal Express executive, was found dead in her Bronx, NY apartment from two gunshot wounds to the head. Less than 24 hours later,  43-year-old Baithe Diop, a driver for New Harlem Car Service, was fatally shot on a nearby street in what police said was an apparent robbery. Police then found two women who told police that they had heard six...

In the early morning hours of September 14, 1982, a man broke into a home in Newport News, Virginia and beat 30-year-old Jesse Perron to death with a crowbar. Then, over several hours, the attacker sexually assaulted Perron’s 22-year-old wife, Teresa, leaving bite marks during the assaults. Teresa and Jesse Perron’s home was located near the shipyard where the U.S.S. Carl Vinson was ha...

  On August 4, 1991, at a nightclub in New York NY, some teenagers began taunting each other and words escalated to punches. When the teenagers came out of the club prepared for a fight, a man shot and killed16-year-old Raymond Blount. Police showed mug shots of several men to a group of Blount’s friends who initially identified a former classmate nicknamed “Wool Lou” ...

On Halloween night in 2012, shots rang out at a party on the campus of the University of Southern California. Four people were injured and no one died. Prosecutors went after 19-year-old Brandon Spencer for the crime. Despite the fact that Brandon had no criminal record and was known for his involvement in sports and community activities, prosecutors claimed he was seeking revenge in a gang feud a...

Since releasing the 500th episode of Wrongful Conviction earlier this month, we thought it appropriate to spotlight some episodes from the very first season of Wrongful Conviction. On the afternoon of November 4, 1986, the body of an African-American woman was found lying under a blanket near a busy highway in Brooklyn, NY. She had been strangled to death. A witness told Detective Louis Eppolito t...

On December 31st, 2009, in Detroit, MI, J.B. Watson was shot in a van while stopped at a red light. Witnesses identified Darrell Ewing as the shooter. Despite Ewing's corroborated alibi of attending a funeral at the Barden Hall Funeral Home at the time of the shooting, he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.  To learn more and get involved: Follow Darrell - ht...

This is a special episode of Wrongful Conviction ,  featuring guests Delia D'Ambra, host of Audiochuck's  CounterClock,  and Frances Watson, President of the Indiana Innocence Project. In Lakeville, Indiana in 1989, Reverend Bob Pelley, his wife Dawn, and Bob’s step-daughters, Janel and Jolene were found shot to death in their home. Bob’s teenage son, Jeff Pelley, was a...

On May 12, 1990, Ron Hilgenberg and his wife were driving in South Dakota on Interstate 90 when a passing vehicle opened fire, killing the 76-year-old man. Stacy Larson and two of his friends were charged with his murder despite no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and what his attorneys called an iron-clad alibi. Stacy was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibilit...

  On Wednesday November, 27, 2024, the night before Thanksgiving, Governor Gavin Newsom of CA granted a a “full and unconditional” pardon to Earlonne Woods, co-host and co-creator of the award-winning podcast, Ear Hustle . Earlonne helped create Ear Hustle while incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison. In recognition of Earlonne’s achievement, we are sharing with you an epi...

In August 2005, 22-year-old Rosa Jimenez was sentenced to 99 years in prison for murder and injury to a child after a 21-month-old child she was babysitting choked on a wad of paper towels. The prosecution’s experts testified that Rosa had to have shoved the towels down little Bryan’s throat. And Rosa, an undocumented Mexican immigrant who didn’t speak English, had woefully inade...

In a 1976 case known as the “Cain and Abel Murders”, Jerry Allen Mark, a former Peace Corps volunteer and “hippie lawyer,” was convicted of murdering his brother Leslie Mark, Leslie’s wife, and their two children in their Iowa farmhouse. The prosecution argued that Jerry killed his family over a property dispute, citing alleged jealousy after Leslie inherited the fami...

On the morning of April 26, 1980, visitors at Wildcat Den State Park in Iowa found the body of 22-year-old Michiel Winkel. She had been stabbed 17 times. From the start, police zeroed in on William Beeman, a local DJ with a reputation for being a womanizer. Despite the fact that William did not know Michiel, there was no physical evidence for the crime, and he had an alibi for the days of her poss...

UPDATE- Gary Benloss walked out of prison on November 20th, 2024, after 22.5 years. Jason was there to greet him. On April 10, 2002, Victor Vulcain was shot and killed in broad daylight in front of 201 Linden Blvd. Brooklyn, NY. There were several witnesses, each of whom provided a version of events to police that stood in conflict with the other witnesses; not even their descriptions of the shoot...

On the evening of October 13, 1992, in the small town of West Liberty, Iowa, Corey Wieneke’s body was found in his bedroom by his fiancee. Annette Cahill, formerly Annette Hazen, was having an affair with him at the time and fully cooperated with the police investigation. But the case went cold for decades until 2017, when investigators got a tip from a woman saying that when she was nine ye...

Ronald Miller and Lori Johnson of Rockford, IL had a daughter, G.M., in 2010. In 2015, several days after an argument between Johnson and Miller in which Miller threatened to sue Johnson for full custody, Johnson reported Miller to DCFS. Shortly after, she obtained an order of protection which ended all contact between Miller and his daughter. Johnson claimed G.M. had told her that Miller touched...

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...

On October 27, 1997, a man was robbed and killed in Philadelphia, PA. Due to mistaken eyewitness identification, 19-year-old Tyree Wallace was implicated in the crime. Tyree was convicted of second-degree murder, robbery, conspiracy, and possession of an instrument of crime and sentenced to life in prison. To Learn more and get involved, visit: https://givebutter.com/tyree https://www.blankrome.co...

On Saturday, June 4, 1983, three members of the Ryen family, as well as their neighbor’s son, Christopher Hughes, were brutally murdered in the Ryen home. 8 year old Joshua Ryen survived horrifying injuries, including a hatchet wound to the head and a slashed throat. The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Office immediately targeted Kevin Cooper because he had recently fled from the California...

On the night of August 2, 1996, Tom Rhodes and his wife Jane were on a boat ride on Green Lake, in Minnesota, when Jane fell overboard. Tom failed to find Jane, and her body was discovered the next day. Police suspected Tom from the get-go, focusing on previous marriage and financial troubles. This led the medical examiner to give his initial finding of undetermined cause of death a second look &n...

Evelyn Malin was the 84-year-old owner of the Dollar Lake Store in tiny Shamrock Township, 130 miles north of Minneapolis. On the morning of February 24, 1998, she was found beaten and strangled to death in the living quarters that were connected to her convenience store. Over a year later, Brian Pippitt was charged with premeditated murder based primarily on the incentivized testimony of two witn...

On the morning of June 12, 1994, Belynda Goff woke up to find her husband Stephen bludgeoned to death in their Green Forest, AR, apartment. From the jump, investigators pegged Belynda’s reaction to the tragedy as suspicious. That initial hunch would set the course of the investigation and subsequent prosecution, leading law enforcement to ignore far more plausible leads and key witnesses, an...