About Xonorate

Xonorate exists because a conviction isn't the end of the story for the people it gets wrong. We document individual cases in detail — the evidence, the record, the people behind it — and give the families and communities affected by wrongful conviction a way to be heard.

More than 3,600 people have been exonerated in the U.S. since 1989, collectively losing over 27,000 years to wrongful imprisonment — and that number only counts the cases that were eventually overturned. Every one of those numbers is a person, a family, and a community that had to live with it in the meantime: a spouse who becomes the sole earner overnight, children who grow up with a parent behind bars for something they didn't do, a neighborhood that loses someone it knew wasn't capable of what they were accused of. That cost rarely shows up in a court record, which is exactly why we ask about it directly for every case we take on.

A public case page and an active petition put pressure where the legal process alone often can't: on the officials, prosecutors, and boards who have the power to act but no public incentive to move quickly. Cases can sit for years without attention. Our job is to make sure they don't sit quietly.

What we do

• Document cases — we build a public record for each client: the conviction, the evidence of innocence, and — where it exists — the path to exoneration.
• Run petitions — live campaigns addressed to the specific officials and bodies who have the power to act on a case, not a generic audience.
• Report the news — daily coverage of wrongful-conviction cases, policy, and reform efforts nationwide, to keep the scale of the problem visible beyond the cases we represent directly.

How we work with attorneys

When a client already has legal representation, we build the public case page directly from the record the legal team has established — the case overview, the evidence of innocence, and the specific due-process or forensic failures at issue. Nothing on a public page goes further than what the attorney of record has already documented; our role is to translate that case file into something the public can read and act on, not to add claims of our own. Attorneys and legal teams with a case they'd like documented can reach out through the inquiry form below.

How we work with families and organizations

Not every case comes to us with an attorney already attached — sometimes a family is pursuing a case on their own, between counsel, or still looking for representation. In those situations, we work directly with the family to document what's known: the facts of the conviction, and the toll it's taken on the people closest to it. We also point families toward the established innocence organizations and legal resources already doing casework in their state, since that legal investigation is specialized work we don't duplicate.

Xonorate is a media and advocacy platform, not a law firm or a substitute for one — we don't provide legal representation. What we add is public documentation, a petition aimed at the people who can act, and ongoing coverage, alongside — not in place of — the legal work being done by attorneys and innocence organizations on a case.

Have a case to share?

Whether you're an attorney with a client's case file ready to go, or a family member navigating this without one yet, our team reviews every submission privately.