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Wrongful Imprisonment

Leonard Peltier Released From 49 Years Of Wrongful Incarceration

Sumterville, FL – This morning, Leonard Peltier was released from over 49 years of wrongful incarceration.  Mr. Peltier is an enrolled citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and will reside on his tribal homelands in North Dakota. Upon Peltier’s request, NDN Collective is bringing him home to the Turtle Mountain community. NDN Collective and partners built upon five decades of organizing and led the advocacy that secured Peltier’s release. Tomorrow, the organization is hosting a celebratory event and community feed to welcome Peltier back to his homelands.   

Chicago Rally Demands State’s Attorney Free Torture Survivors

Chicago, IL – On the morning of Monday, December 2, about 30 demonstrators, led by survivors of wrongful convictions and their loved ones, gathered in below-freezing temperatures outside the downtown Chicago office of incoming Cook County State's Attorney Eileen Burke to demand she free torture survivors and the wrongfully convicted. Speakers gave testimony, chanted, and held signs that reinforced their demands. Burke has a lot of work to do to keep up with her predecessor Kim Foxx, who freed over 300 survivors of wrongful conviction and police torture during her eight years in office.

Five Victories Against Wrongful Convictions In The First Week Of 2024

The new year has just begun and already there have been five victories against wrongful conviction within the first week, with the release of Montana Innocence Project (MIP) client Bernard Pease Jr. and the exonerations of William Williams and Renay Lynch in the U.S., and Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie in Canada. Each of them had served decades in prison – a total of 191 years — for crimes they did not commit. They all received the help of innocence organizations, which are nonprofit organizations that provide legal services to innocent people in prison and prevent wrongful convictions through legal education and reform.

Longest Wrongful Conviction Sentence In US Ends In Exoneration

Glynn Simmons, who spent 48 years 1 month and 18 days in an Oklahoma prison for a crime he did not commit, has been exonerated, having served the longest sentence for a wrongfully convicted person in U.S. history. Simmons and a co-defendant were sentenced to death in 1975 for a murder committed during a liquor store robbery, but the death sentences were commuted to life in prison when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional. The co-defendant was paroled in 2008. Simmons was 22 years old when two women were shot in a liquor store robbery on New Years Eve in 1974.

US Judge Orders Release Of Three ‘Newburgh Four’

A US federal judge has ordered the release on compassionate grounds of three men convicted in a case that became known as the "Newburgh Four", in a severe rebuke of the FBI's use of an informant in an "unscrupulous" operation to persuade the men into committing a violent plot to blow up synagogues and shoot down National Guard planes. In a scathing rebuke against the FBI, US District Judge Colleen McMahon said that the men - Laguerre Payen, Onta Williams, and David Williams - were "in reality, hapless, easily manipulated and penurious petty criminals". The fourth individual, James Cromitie, did not seek compassionate release and is expected to serve until 2030.
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