Cases

Taron Hill

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

Convicted of Two counts of murder and related weapons offenses · 2006

Taron Hill was convicted in 2006 of the September 25, 2004 shooting deaths of Robin Battie and Tinesha Lewis in Camden, New Jersey, and sentenced to 60 years without parole. The case against him rested on a single-photo eyewitness identification and two jailhouse informants who later recanted — no forensic evidence ever tied him to the crime, and the murder weapon was never found. New Jersey's Conviction Review Unit, in its first-ever exoneration, found clear and convincing evidence he should not have been convicted. His conviction was vacated July 9, 2021, after more than 16 years in prison.

Kevin Baker

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

Convicted of Murder, Conspiracy, Illegal Use of a Weapon · 1996

Shortly before 6 a.m. on January 28, 1995, an unidentified caller reported finding two bodies in a pool of blood in Camden's Roosevelt Manor housing complex. Rodney Turner, 35, and Margaret Wilson, 40, had both been shot in the head. Five days later, based on street rumor, police arrested Kevin Baker and Sean Washington, then both 23, largely on the word of a single eyewitness, Denise Rand, who was high on crack cocaine at the time of the shooting and gave inconsistent, wavering testimony at trial. Baker and Washington were convicted after a two-day trial in August 1996 and sentenced to 60 years to life. Baker maintained an alibi — that he was with his girlfriend, Michelle Redden, at her mother's home and then her apartment that night — but the lawyer never called Redden as a witness. In 2011, the Last Resort Exoneration Project at Seton Hall Law School began reinvestigating, eventually uncovering a 911 recording (made by Washington, not identified for 18 years) and new ballistics and forensic analysis showing both victims were shot at close range while on the ground, directly contradicting the eyewitness's account of them being shot while running. In December 2019, the New Jersey Appellate Division unanimously vacated both convictions, finding the new evidence "powerfully undermines" that testimony. Camden County prosecutors declined to retry the case, and Baker and Washington were released on February 11, 2020, after nearly 25 years in prison.

Sean Washington

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

Convicted of Murder, Conspiracy, Illegal Use of a Weapon · 1996

Shortly before 6 a.m. on January 28, 1995, an unidentified caller reported finding two bodies in a pool of blood in Camden's Roosevelt Manor housing complex. Rodney Turner, 35, and Margaret Wilson, 40, had both been shot in the head. Five days later, based on street rumor, police arrested Sean Washington and Kevin Baker, then both 23, largely on the word of a single eyewitness, Denise Rand, who was high on crack cocaine at the time of the shooting and gave inconsistent, wavering testimony at trial. Washington and Baker were convicted after a two-day trial in August 1996 and sentenced to 60 years to life. Washington had in fact called 911 himself that morning after discovering the bodies while walking to a nearby pay phone, fearing one victim was his nephew — but that call went unidentified for 18 years. Beginning in 2011, the Last Resort Exoneration Project at Seton Hall Law School uncovered the 911 recording and new ballistics and forensic analysis showing both victims were shot at close range while on the ground, directly contradicting Rand's account of them being shot while running. In December 2019, the New Jersey Appellate Division unanimously vacated both convictions, finding the new evidence "powerfully undermines" Rand's testimony. Camden County prosecutors declined to retry the case, and Washington and Baker were released on February 11, 2020, after nearly 25 years in prison.

Anthony Ray Hinton

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

Alabama, Jefferson County

Convicted of Murder (two counts of capital murder) · 1986

In 1985, two fast-food restaurant managers in the Birmingham, Alabama area — John Davidson (Davison) and Thomas Vason — were robbed and fatally shot, and a third manager, Sidney Smotherman, was robbed and shot but survived. Smotherman picked Anthony Hinton, then 29, out of a photo lineup after an acquaintance said a composite sketch resembled Hinton, and state forensic examiners testified that all six bullets from the three crimes were fired by an old .38-caliber revolver found under Hinton's mother's mattress; that ballistics claim was the only evidence tying him to the murders. A Jefferson County jury convicted him on September 17, 1986, after about an hour of deliberation, and in December 1986 the jury voted 10-2 for death; he spent nearly three decades on Alabama's death row before the charges were dismissed in 2015.

Ricky Jackson

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

Ohio

Convicted of Aggravated murder, aggravated attempted murder, and aggravated robbery · 1975

In 1975, money-order salesman Franks was robbed outside a Cleveland store; the robbers clubbed him on the head with a pipe, splashed acid in his face and shot him twice in the chest, killing him, and also shot 58-year-old Ann Robinson, a co-owner of the store, who survived. Within a week police took a statement from 12-year-old Edward (Eddie) Vernon, who named 18-year-old Ricky Jackson as the gunman and said 17-year-old Ronnie Bridgeman and Ronnie's 20-year-old brother Wiley (the alleged getaway driver) were with him; all three were arrested on May 25, 1975, and none had a criminal record. Jackson was convicted and sentenced to death on the strength of that single boy's account, and was exonerated in November 2014 after Vernon testified that he had never witnessed the crime and had been pressured by police into testifying.

Kennedy Brewer

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

Mississippi, Noxubee County

Convicted of Murder (most serious crime), with additional convictions for Rape and Kidnapping; contemporaneous coverage and the Innocence Project describe the conviction as capital murder and sexual battery, entered March 24, 1995. · 1995

In the early morning hours of May 3, 1992, three-year-old Christine Jackson -- the daughter of Kennedy Brewer's girlfriend, Gloria Jackson -- was abducted from her home in Noxubee County, Mississippi, raped and murdered; her body was found two days later in a creek about 500 yards from the home. Brewer, who had been babysitting Christine and her two younger siblings that night, was arrested and, after three years in jail awaiting trial, was convicted in March 1995 and sentenced to death almost entirely on bitemark testimony from dentist Dr. Michael West. DNA testing in 2001 excluded Brewer and, after a later Innocence Project investigation matched the DNA to another man who then confessed, Brewer was exonerated on February 15, 2008 -- the first person exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing in Mississippi.

Anthony Ways

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

Convicted of Murder, Robbery, Illegal Use of a Weapon · 1991

Shortly after midnight on April 23, 1989, Wayne Hunter drove John Weist III, 20, into Camden, New Jersey to buy cocaine. When they stopped at a corner Weist directed him to, a man approached, demanded money, and fired a pistol through the car window as they sped off, killing Weist. Police showed Hunter — who was near-sighted and not wearing his glasses that night — a photo lineup, and he picked out 19-year-old Anthony Ways, the only person in the lineup wearing a hat. Ways, known as "Mancakes" and the leader of a local street gang, was arrested two days later. A cocaine addict, Donna Carter, later told police she saw Ways and another man, Bryant Anderson, approach the car; at trial she recanted and testified only Ways was there and that he fired the shot. A jury acquitted Anderson but convicted Ways of murder, robbery, and weapons charges in September 1991, and he was sentenced to life. Ways always maintained the shooting happened at a different bar two blocks away, and that the real shooter was a man named Franklin King, who was known to carry the same caliber weapon and who — on separate occasions, to at least three different people, including Ways's own cousin — admitted to shooting Weist. At a 2000 post-conviction hearing, multiple witnesses recanted or corroborated the alternate account. In 2004, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed his conviction and ordered a new trial, finding the new evidence "sufficiently implicated King in the shooting" that it likely would have led to an acquittal. Rather than face a retrial, prosecutors dismissed the murder charges in October 2005 after Ways pleaded guilty to lesser charges of witness tampering and hindering apprehension; he was sentenced to time already served. He had spent 14 years in prison.