Today's roundup
A note on sourcing before we start: we only publish what we can point to. Some of the items below broke in the last week or two; a couple are recent follow-ups we're including because they illustrate patterns readers should know about. Every date is labeled. Nothing here is reconstructed from memory or rumor.
Judicial discipline: two states remove judges from the bench
Maryland. The Supreme Court of Maryland has issued its opinion in In the Matter of the Honorable Marc Knapp, a judicial discipline case arising from proceedings before the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities. The Court weighed the violations of the Maryland Code of Judicial Conduct it found, considered mitigating factors, and concluded that removal was "the only disposition sufficient to preserve the integrity, independence, and impartiality of the Judiciary." (opinion PDF, posted within the past week.)
New Mexico. On July 10, the New Mexico Administrative Office of the Courts announced that the state Supreme Court had rejected a challenge to the disciplinary process used to remove McKinley County Magistrate Judge Brent Detsoi from the bench. The unanimous opinion explained the reasoning behind an earlier order removing Detsoi and permanently barring him from holding judicial office, concluding that he "committed willful misconduct." (NM Courts release.)
Why this matters to people fighting a conviction: judicial conduct commissions are, in most states, the only body with the power to remove a sitting judge. New York's commission chair made exactly that point earlier this year in coverage of a Brooklyn judge's arrest — the commission is the sole entity that can remove a judge for misconduct or criminal conduct (Queens Daily Eagle, May 21, 2026). These bodies act on complaints from ordinary people. New York's commission has moved on multiple town justices this year, including a recommendation to remove a Chenango County town justice (NY Daily Record, April 2, 2026) and several negotiated departures from the bench (NYS CJC news page).
Exonerations: police corruption in Detroit, discredited forensics in Philadelphia
Michigan. The University of Michigan Law School reports that its Michigan Innocence Clinic helped free a client, Hill, more than 22 years after a wrongful murder conviction. He was convicted in 2002 — in part because of police corruption — of two murders he did not commit, and the case ran through Wayne County Circuit Court (Michigan Law).
Pennsylvania. In a case still reverberating through Philadelphia, a judge vacated the convictions of Jermal Shuler, Marc Brittingham, and Rasheed Smith in a 1997 North Philadelphia murder after new forensic evidence discredited the expert testimony used against them (The Exoneration Project, May 26, 2026). Philadelphia's exoneration record remains a live public argument — the Inquirer ran reader letters on exonerations by the District Attorney's office as recently as yesterday, July 27 (Philadelphia Inquirer).
Those two cases are a clean illustration of the two most durable engines of wrongful conviction: corrupt or dishonest police work, and forensic testimony that sounded authoritative and wasn't.
Police accountability: a conviction, and the records nobody reads
In Wayne County, Michigan, former Melvindale police lieutenant Matthew Furman was convicted by a jury of misconduct in office — a five-year felony — and assault and battery in connection with a July 2024 tasing incident, while being acquitted in a second excessive-force case (WXYZ, Detroit News, April 23, 2026). Criminal convictions of officers are rare enough to be news; sustained administrative findings are far more common and far less visible. Massachusetts, for one, publishes summaries of sustained allegations and discipline imposed on active officers through its POST Commission (MA POST disciplinary records). If you're supporting someone with a claim of police misconduct, those databases are free and searchable, and defense counsel does not always check them.
The numbers, and the patterns underneath them
- The National Registry of Exonerations (Michigan State College of Law, Newkirk Center, and Michigan Law) is the authoritative U.S. count and tracks not just how many exonerations occur but the contributing causes and costs (exonerationregistry.org).
- The Death Penalty Information Center reports that since 1973, at least 202 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated (DPIC).
- The Innocence Project's exoneration data set, drawn from case documents in DNA and non-DNA exonerations, is where the familiar contributing factors come from: eyewitness misidentification, false confessions and admissions, unvalidated or improper forensic science, jailhouse informants, and official misconduct including suppressed evidence (Innocence Project data).
Read the two exonerations above against that list and the overlap is exact. Discredited expert testimony. Police corruption. These are not freak events; they are the system's most reliable failure modes.
That is also why recantations matter so much. In our own casework in Camden County, New Jersey, the Richard Barge case turns on precisely this pattern — the sole eyewitness has recanted, the informants have recanted, and new evidence points to other suspects. If you think discredited testimony should not be allowed to hold a conviction together after it collapses, add your name here. The suppressed-evidence problem flagged in the Innocence Project's data is the core of the Stephon Downer case as well, where four witnesses say he wasn't at the scene and the man they identify has never been charged (petition).
What you can actually do today
- File a judicial conduct complaint if you've witnessed judicial misconduct. New York: the Commission on Judicial Conduct, complaint information at cjc.ny.gov. New Mexico: the Judicial Standards Commission, with Supreme Court disciplinary decisions posted at nmcourts.gov. Maryland: the Commission on Judicial Disabilities, whose cases are decided by the Supreme Court of Maryland (mdcourts.gov). Every state has one; complaints are the trigger, and they come from the public.
- Pull the discipline record on any officer central to a case you care about. Start with your state's POST or certification body — Massachusetts' public database is the model (mapostcommission.gov). In the UK, conduct outcomes are published by the Independent Office for Police Conduct.
- Refer a case. The Michigan Innocence Clinic, The Exoneration Project, and the Innocence Project all take intake requests through their websites. Intake is slow. Start now, not after the next denial.
- Sign and share. Conviction review units respond to volume and visibility. Two minutes on a petition is not nothing when the alternative is silence.
We publish this roundup daily. If you have a case, a document, or a correction, send it to us — we will read it.