Exonerated

Taron Hill

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

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

New Jersey's Attorney General's Office Conviction Review Unit reviewed the case and found clear and convincing evidence Hill should not have been convicted, citing the flawed single-photo identification and the informants' recantations. Camden County Superior Court Judge Edward J. McBride Jr. vacated the conviction on July 9, 2021 — the Conviction Review Unit's first exoneration. Attorney Justin Bonus represented Hill.

Kevin Baker

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

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

Starting in 2011, the Last Resort Exoneration Project at Seton Hall Law School re-investigated the case, eventually obtaining a 911 call recording that multiple witnesses identified as co-defendant Sean Washington's voice reporting the bodies — evidence never turned over to the defense at trial. Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden and firearms expert Lucien Haag testified that bullet trajectories, ricochet "bow effect" scoring, and soil mineralization on the recovered bullets showed victim Margaret Wilson had been shot while lying on the ground — directly contradicting eyewitness Denise Rand's trial testimony that she saw the victims shot while standing and running. On December 26, 2019, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court unanimously vacated both convictions, finding the new evidence "powerfully undermines" Rand's account. The Camden County Prosecutor's Office declined to retry the case, and a judge dismissed all charges on February 11, 2020. Baker later settled a state compensation claim for $1.25 million.

Sean Washington

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

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

Starting in 2011, the Last Resort Exoneration Project at Seton Hall Law School re-investigated the case and obtained the 911 call recording, which multiple witnesses identified as Washington's own voice reporting the bodies. Forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden and firearms expert Lucien Haag testified that bullet trajectories, ricochet "bow effect" scoring, and soil mineralization on the recovered bullets showed Wilson had been shot while lying on the ground — directly contradicting Rand's trial testimony that she saw the victims shot while standing and running. On December 26, 2019, the Appellate Division of the New Jersey Superior Court unanimously vacated both convictions, finding the new evidence "powerfully undermines" Rand's account. The Camden County Prosecutor's Office declined to retry the case, and a judge dismissed all charges on February 11, 2020. Washington later settled a state compensation claim for $1.25 million.

Anthony Ray Hinton

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

Alabama, Jefferson County

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

Equal Justice Initiative attorney Bryan Stevenson took the case and, in post-conviction proceedings, presented three leading firearms examiners who testified in 2002 that the crime-scene bullets could not be matched to the revolver from Hinton's home and may not even have come from a single gun. State courts denied relief until February 24, 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous per curiam decision (Hinton v. Alabama, 571 U.S. 263), held trial counsel's performance constitutionally deficient under Strickland because his failure to seek additional expert funding rested on a mistaken belief about the law, and remanded on prejudice. A new trial was ordered; preparing for retrial, the State's own new experts also concluded they could not link the victims' bullets to the gun. On April 2, 2015, a judge granted the Jefferson County District Attorney's motion to dismiss the charges, and Hinton walked free April 3, 2015. Efforts to pass legislation compensating him failed in 2017.

Ricky Jackson

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

Ohio

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

A magazine article by reporter Kyle Swenson re-examined the case and revealed that Vernon had been paid $50 by Ann Robinson's husband to testify - a fact Vernon never disclosed on the stand. Swenson could not get Vernon to talk, so he approached Vernon's pastor, Arthur Singleton; when Singleton visited Vernon in a hospital in 2013, where Vernon was being treated for high blood pressure, and raised the article again, Vernon admitted he had lied. The Ohio Innocence Project re-investigated and obtained police reports and evidence of witness intimidation and nondisclosure, and in November 2014 Judge Richard McMonagle held a hearing on Jackson's motion for a new trial at which Vernon testified that police fed him the details of the crime and that he had never seen the attack; the convictions were overturned and the charges dismissed in November 2014.

Kennedy Brewer

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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 2001, DNA testing on sperm recovered from the victim proved Brewer was not the source and his conviction was overturned; it was vacated the following year and he was moved from death row to pre-trial detention. The prosecution said it would retry him, but the case sat untried for five more years. In 2007, because of conflicts of interest in the Noxubee County District Attorney's office, Ben Creekmore of Oxford, Mississippi, was appointed Special Prosecutor; he declined to seek the death penalty and did not oppose bail, and Brewer was released in August 2007. During retrial preparation the Innocence Project asked the Mississippi Attorney General's office to intervene, and DNA testing matched the unidentified 2001 profile to Justin Albert Johnson, 51, an original suspect with a history of sexual assaults who had lived near both victims. Johnson was arrested and confessed to Christine Jackson's murder and to the September 1990 rape and murder of three-year-old Courtney Smith, insisting he acted alone in both. On February 15, 2008, the prosecution dismissed the charges and Brewer was exonerated -- Mississippi's first post-conviction DNA exoneration.

Anthony Ways

Spotlight case — not a Xonorate client

New Jersey, Camden County

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

At a 2000 post-conviction hearing, several witnesses gave new or recanted testimony: Tyrone Williams said Franklin King had tried to sell him a .44 Magnum hours after the murder and admitted having "a body on the gun"; Donna Carter recanted her trial testimony, saying she had falsely implicated Ways because she was high, afraid of being charged, and had been coached by the prosecutor; alibi witness Todd Johnson admitted he had falsely placed Ways at a bar that night; a retired Camden police officer testified King had told him, before any gun evidence was public, "I'm not the only one in Camden with a .44 Magnum"; and Ways's own cousin testified King twice admitted to him, in prison, that he shot Weist. King himself testified at the hearing that Ways was innocent — "someone else did it. It wasn't this guy" — while denying he was the shooter. In 2004, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed Ways's conviction, finding the new evidence "sufficiently implicated King in the shooting" that it likely would have led to Ways's acquittal at trial. Rather than face a retrial, Camden County prosecutors dismissed the murder, robbery, and weapons charges in October 2005 after Ways pleaded guilty to unrelated witness-tampering and hindering-apprehension charges, for which he was sentenced to time served. He settled a wrongful-conviction lawsuit for $280,000 in 2008 and has since advocated for other wrongfully convicted people, including serving on the advisory committee for an innocence project at Rutgers University.