Colorado recently became the 12th state in the nation to mandate best practices for eyewitness identifications in criminal investigations. SB 58, the Eyewitness Identifications Policies and Procedures bill, requires all Colorado law enforcement agencies to adopt written policies and procedures…
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office under Jackie Lacey is launching a conviction integrity unit comprised of three prosecutors, a senior investigator, and a paralegal to address claims of wrongful conviction. The new unit follows a rise in wrongful-conviction…
Former Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins will be honored at NCIP’s eighth annual Justice for All awards dinner on March 12, 2015 for his commitment to the integrity of the criminal justice system. In 2007, Watkins founded the internationally…
The state of Connecticut has awarded exoneree Kenneth Ireland $6 million in compensation for a wrongful rape and murder conviction that sent him to prison for 21 years. In 1989, Ireland was convicted for the 1986 rape and murder of Barbara…
Derrick Hamilton, 49, was exonerated on Friday after serving nearly two decades for a murder in Brooklyn that he did not commit. Although Hamilton maintained that he was in Connecticut at the time of the shooting murder of Nathaniel Cash…
New York City, its Housing Authority, and the state of New York have agreed to pay $9 million to Danny Colon and Anthony Ortiz, who spent 16 years in prison before their convictions were overturned in 2009. Colon and Ortiz…
Dennis Lee Allen and Stanley Orson Mozee were released last Tuesday after Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins recommended that their murder convictions be overturned. In 2000, Allen and Mozee were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the…
David McCallum and the late William Stuckey, who were just 16 years old when they were wrongfully convicted of murder and kidnapping in 1986, had their convictions vacated Wednesday by a Brooklyn judge. Although initially during videotaped interviews each suspect…
U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen Jr.’s Office in Washington, D.C. recently founded the first federal unit in the nation to review and investigate wrongful conviction cases. The Conviction Integrity Unit was established after federal prosecutors in Washington examined evidence in five…
The National Academy of Sciences published a breakthrough report Thursday evaluating scientific research on memory and eyewitness identification. As eyewitness misidentification is one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions in the United States, the report recommends best practices to…