Innocence Cases

April 4, 2009

by J. Patrick O'Connor

Since his conviction in 1982 for the murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, through his numerous books, essays and radio commentaries, has become the face of the anti-death penalty movement in the United States and an international cause célèbre. Paris, for example, made him an honorary citizen in 2003, bestowing the honor for the first time since Pablo Picasso received it in 1971.

March 29, 2009

Wrongly accused? Omar Raddad stands outside the courthouse.

by Anthony Davis

Wealthy widow Ghislaine Marchal, 65, lived alone in a luxury villa in the affluent village of Mougins, near Cannes on the French Riviera. On the morning of Sunday, June 23, 1991, she was relaxing beside her pool doing a crossword puzzle, her favourite pastime, when her friends and neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Koster called over the fence to invite her to lunch. She readily accepted.

Updated January 14, 2007

by Lona Manning

"The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters"

Kelly Michaels never intended to become a preschool teacher -- she had taken fine arts and drama in college -- but she wanted to live near New York City and was looking for something to pay the rent when she applied at Wee Care Day Care in Maplewood, N.J. Although Kelly doubted if she had the qualifications, the director, Arlene Spector, had been encouraging and had persuaded her to give it a try. Once hired, Kelly was quickly promoted from teacher's aide to preschool teacher.

by Doris Lane

If you stood on Greene Street, off Spring Street in SoHo, looked around and imagined the past, you might be able to picture Lispenard's Meadow of 1799. Not flat, like now, but gently hilly: A rural pleasure ground for strolling New Yorkers in summer; a vast ice-skating arena when the meadows froze over in winter.

Broadway then was a narrow country lane used to herd cows north from the city to feed at the grassy salt meadow. Spring Street, today lined with art galleries and expensive shops, was a path to the Hudson River. From the corner of Broadway and Spring Street, in 1799, there would not be a cobble-stoned street in sight. If you looked through the trees you could see the white country mansion of Aaron Burr, the New York lawyer soon to be Vice President of the United States.

March 14, 2005

Leo Frank (photograph c. 1915)

by Denise Noe

At approximately 3 a.m. on Sunday, April 27, 1913, the night watchman of the National Pencil Company in Atlanta discovered a girl's brutally battered body in the factory's basement. Covered with sawdust, her skull was caked with dried blood, her eyes were bruised, her face scratched and bruised and some of her fingers out of joint. A piece of rope, along with a strip taken from her own underpants, encircled her neck.

by Lona Manning

Mary and Robert Halsey

Robert Halsey is in prison in Massachusetts. He's in his 70s, in poor health and he's been behind bars since 1993. Officially, he was convicted of sexual assault on children, but in another sense, he was convicted of being the bogeyman. His trial transcript makes for chilling reading -- and not for the reason you might expect. It raises the frightening possibility that an innocent person was accused and convicted of a childish concoction of fantasy and fear.

July 22, 2007
(updated 02/16/09)

Ryan Ferguson

by Jane Alexander

On a warm Halloween night in 2001, Kent Heitholt, the sports editor of the Columbia Daily Tribune, worked into the night. He logged off his computer at 2:08 a.m., chatted with some colleagues, and made his way out of the Tribune building to his car in the newspaper's parking lot. There he had a conversation with colleague Michael Boyd that lasted until approximately 2:17 a.m. Minutes after that, Heitholt was brutally beaten, hit 11 times over the head with a metal object, and strangled to death with his own belt.