Innocence Cases

Sept. 30, 2009 Updated June 25, 2010

Caryl Chessman

Convicted in 1948 as “The Red Light Bandit,” Caryl Chessman would become an internationally known “Death Row” author and make the cover of Time Magazine. His appeal attorney came within minutes of preventing his wrongful execution in 1960.

by Randy Radic

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. The “Free Mumia” slogan is seen and heard around the world. Over the last 27 years he has become the most visible of the invisible 3,600 Death Row inmates in the United States.

December 6, 2002
Last update: July 10, 2009

Nancy Smith, center, with her four teenage children.

by Lona Manning

BULLETIN – Lorain County Common Pleas Court Judge James Burge has overturned the convictions of Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen. Smith, a single mother, was a bus driver for Head Start when she and Allen, a 40-year-old unskilled laborer, were accused of perverted sexual assaults on little children and have served nearly 15 years in prison since their convictions in 1994.

“The court has absolutely no confidence that these verdicts are correct,” said Judge Burge prior to acquitting the two.

by Denise Noe

April 5, 2009 by J. Patrick O'Connor

Mumia Abu-Jamal's 27 years on Death Row for a murder he did not commit would have turned almost anyone else into an embittered, defeated man. Instead, he has remained what he always was, "the voice of the voiceless," as he demonstrates yet again in his most recent book, Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A. (City Lights Books, 2009.)