Forensic error

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.

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.

State forensic examiners testified that all six bullets from three related crimes were fired from one .38-caliber revolver found under a relative's mattress — ballistics testimony that was the only physical evidence tying Hinton to the murders. Independent experts later disputed that conclusion.

Just after 9:30 p.m. on April 25, 1976, a man broke into a house on South Union Street in Concord, North Carolina, and raped Sarah Bost, a 54-year-old white widow who was home alone. The attacker covered her face and told her not to look at him. Bost did not identify anyone from a photo array at the hospital, and her first description was of a Black man in a dark leather jacket with no mention of facial hair. Later she described him as "light-skinned" or "yellow." Ronnie Long, a 20-year-old Black cement mason who lived with his parents, was arrested on a trespassing charge on April 29. Instead of showing Bost his photo, police brought her to his May 10 court date, where she sat disguised in a red wig and sunglasses and told officers he was her attacker before he said a word. Police then arrested him for rape and burglary. An all-white jury, seated from a 49-person pool that included only two Black residents after law enforcement screened the jury list, convicted him on October 1, 1976. He was sentenced to life. No physical evidence tied him to the crime, and several alibi witnesses had placed him elsewhere that night. Thirty years later, records finally released under a 2005 court order showed that the State Bureau of Investigation had tested 14 pieces of evidence in 1976 and that none of it implicated Long. The lead detective had told the jury the opposite, and a later judge wrote that he "lied. Repeatedly." Forty-three fingerprints lifted from the scene, never disclosed, excluded Long. In August 2020 the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, by a 9-6 vote, reversed the dismissal of his habeas petition. He walked out on August 27, 2020, after 44 years, 3 months, and 17 days. Governor Roy Cooper pardoned him on grounds of innocence on December 17, 2020. In January 2024 the City of Concord agreed to pay $22 million and the State of North Carolina $3 million to settle his civil-rights lawsuit.

Byron Halsey spent 19 years in New Jersey prisons for the 1985 sexual assault and murders of the two young children of his girlfriend, Margaret Urquhart, in the Plainfield rooming house where they all lived. Police interrogated Halsey — a man with a sixth-grade education and severe learning disabilities — for roughly 30 hours over a 40-hour span until he signed a statement that prosecutors used as a confession, and they stopped investigating neighbor Clifton ("Cliff") Hall. DNA testing obtained by the Innocence Project in 2006 excluded Halsey and identified Hall as the source of crime-scene evidence; Halsey's convictions were vacated on May 15, 2007, and all charges were dismissed on July 9, 2007.

Brewer was convicted largely on bite-mark testimony from a forensic dentist, who testified that marks on the victim's body were human bite marks matching Brewer's teeth. The marks were later determined to be insect bites, and DNA testing excluded Brewer entirely.

Jill Halliburton Su was found dead in her Davie, Florida home on September 8, 2014, bound and stabbed in a bathtub. Nine days later, a DNA database search returned the name of Dayonte Resiles, then twenty years old, with no known connection to the victim or her family. He was arrested the following day. The State's case rested on DNA. Prosecutors told jurors that Mr. Resiles' DNA was recovered from items at the scene and that this established he was the killer. The defense argued throughout that a DNA association does not establish who committed a homicide, when the DNA was deposited, or how it got there. His first trial ended in a mistrial in December 2021 under extraordinary circumstances: the jury returned a manslaughter verdict, and when jurors were polled, one said she did not agree with it. Following the mistrial, a juror stated that some jurors had been unwilling to convict on the greater charge because of his race. A retrial three months later produced a first-degree murder conviction. The Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed in a one-word per curiam opinion in January 2025. Mr. Resiles has maintained his innocence for twelve years, including in a letter to the court and in open court at his own sentencing. Xonorate is supporting his request for independent post-conviction review.