Wrongful Convictions

Ryan Ferguson was wrongfully convicted in 2001 of second-degree murder of Columbia Tribune Sports Editor Kent Heitholt, and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Ferguson is one of roughly 2.3 million people currently housed in America’s prison system. The United States incarcerates more people than any civilized nation on earth. A majority of those convicted are guilty as charged …

Jeffrey Havard currently sits wrongfully convicted on death row in Mississippi for the sexual assault and murder of his girlfriend’s six-month-old daughter, Chloe Britt. Chloe’s death was a tragic accident, not a murder. Havard accidentally dropped Chloe after giving her a bath. According to Havard, Chloe slipped out of his hands and hit her head on the toilet. The evidence …

William “Bill” Dillon was wrongfully convicted in Florida for the murder of forty-year-old James Dvorak in 1981. It would take over twenty-seven years for Dillon to clear his name. The prosecution secured the conviction based on a bloody shirt found at the crime scene and testimony provided by John Preston and his “scent-tracking” German Shepherd. Preston testified in over 100 …

It seemed that Italy’s nonsensical persecution of Seattle native Amanda Knox and her Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, was over when the two were exonerated and released from prison by an appellate court jury in October of 2011. Not so. On March 26 of this year the Italian Supreme Court in Rome annulled the 2011 acquittal, sending the case back to …

The Committee to Free Jamie Snow is hosting their third annual Postcards in the Park event this weekend in Bloomington, Illinois. The annual event is designed to bring more attention to the wrongful conviction of Jamie Snow. Jamie Snow was wrongfully convicted in 2001 for the 1991 murder of William Little, a gas station attendant in Bloomington, Illinois. Jamie is …

Much has happened in the case of the murder of Meredith Kercher since her body was discovered on November 2, 2007, in Perugia, Italy. The latest development comes from the Italian Supreme Court, which recently annulled the not-guilty decision of the previous appellate court, and ordered a reexamination of the evidence and a new appeal trial for defendants, Amanda Knox …