Wrongful Conviction Cases
Wrongful convictions represent catastrophic failures of the criminal justice system, where innocent individuals are convicted of crimes they did not commit. The causes are well-documented: eyewitness misidentification, false confessions, flawed forensic science, prosecutorial misconduct, and inadequate legal representation. Organizations like the Innocence Project have helped exonerate hundreds of people, many of whom served decades in prison for crimes committed by someone else. These cases expose systemic weaknesses and have driven significant reforms in how evidence is collected, preserved, and analyzed. CaseSleuth tracks wrongful conviction cases with detailed timelines covering the original investigation, trial, appeals process, and eventual exoneration, along with analysis of what went wrong and what reforms resulted.
7 cases found
Pam Hupp
ConvictedTroy, MO · 2011
Pam Hupp is a Missouri woman who benefited financially from the 2011 stabbing death of her friend Betsy Faria, allowed Betsy's husband to be wrongfully convicted, and in 2016 shot and killed a disabled man she had lured to her home in a scheme to frame the exonerated husband. She pleaded guilty to the second murder in 2019 and faces trial for the first.
Amanda Knox
AcquittedPerugia · 2007
American exchange student Amanda Knox was convicted and then ultimately acquitted of the 2007 murder of her British roommate Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy, after years of legal proceedings across multiple trials. The Italian Supreme Court definitively acquitted her in 2015.
Steven Avery / Teresa Halbach
Appeals OngoingManitowoc, WI · 2005
Steven Allan Avery is an American from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin who was convicted of murder in 2007. He had previously been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of sexual assault and attempted murder. After serving 18 years of a 32-year sentence, Avery was exonerated by DNA testing and released in 2003, only to be charged with murder in a different case two years later.
Chandra Levy Disappearance
UnsolvedWashington, DC · 2001
Washington, D.C. intern Chandra Levy vanished in May 2001. Her remains were found in Rock Creek Park in 2002. Ingmar Guandique was convicted in 2010 but the conviction was vacated in 2016. The case remains officially unsolved.
Adnan Syed / Hae Min Lee
AcquittedBaltimore, MD · 1999
Adnan Syed was convicted in 2000 of murdering his ex-girlfriend, 18-year-old Hae Min Lee, who disappeared from her Baltimore high school on January 13, 1999. Her body was found in Leakin Park six weeks later. The Serial podcast's 2014 investigation reignited national debate about the reliability of the evidence. In 2022, Syed's conviction was vacated and he was released; in 2023, charges were dropped.
West Memphis Three
AcquittedWest Memphis, AR · 1993
Three teenagers — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley — were convicted in 1994 for the 1993 murders of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, largely on the basis of a coerced confession and moral panic about Satanism. They were released in 2011 after entering Alford pleas.
Central Park Five (Exonerated Five)
AcquittedNew York, NY · 1989
In April 1989, five Black and Latino teenagers from Harlem were wrongfully convicted of the brutal rape and beating of a jogger in Central Park, based on false confessions extracted through coercive interrogations. They were exonerated in 2002 after the actual perpetrator confessed and his DNA matched the crime scene evidence.