Michael Kenneth McAlister was pardoned by Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Richmond, Virginia, last week after spending nearly 30 years behind bars for a violent sex offense he never committed. The 58-year-old was originally charged in February 1986 for the abduction…
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…
NCIP Board Member Jennifer Thompson and exoneree Ronald Cotton were recognized by the Department of Justice at the Victims’ Rights Service Awards ceremony on Tuesday. Attorney General Eric Holder presided over the event, honoring Jennifer and Ronald for their extraordinary…
After serving 18 years in prison for a crime they did not commit, Derrick Wheatt, Laurese Glover and Eugene Johnson had their convictions overturned by Cuyahoga County Judge Nancy Margaret Russo on March 26 with ten years of legal advocacy…
Kirk Bloodsworth, the first death row inmate to be exonerated based on DNA testing, will be honored at NCIP’s eighth annual Justice for All awards dinner on March 12, 2015. In 1984, Bloodsworth was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death…
Detroit resident Donya Davis, who served nearly seven years behind bars for a wrongful rape conviction, was recently exonerated after post-conviction DNA testing revealed his innocence. Although DNA tests were performed on a rape kit obtained from the victim and…
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…
We had some VIPs in the NCIP class yesterday! As part of our module on eyewitness misidentification, NCIP law students served as jurists in a mock trial that demonstrated how compelling an eyewitness can be to a jury—even if there…
After years of proclaiming his innocence of a rape in Texas for which he was convicted, Michael Phillips, 57, had done his time and resigned himself to a lifetime of registering as a sex offender. But he was exonerated by…
Nearly 200 people attended the Northern California Innocence Project’s (NCIP) Eyewitness Identification Best Practices Symposium at the University of San Francisco (USF) on May 21, 2014. The symposium, sponsored by a Flom Incubator Grant from the Skadden Fellowship Foundation, brought…