Innocent People in Georgia Prisons: The Scope and Scale of Wrongful Conviction

Conviction Integrity Units (CIUs) helped secure 23 exonerations in 2025.

A 2017 Urban Institute summary technical report for the National Institute of Justice estimated wrongful conviction at 11.6 percent in a Virginia sample. The report gives TWO rates and they are not interchangeable. 12.6 percent is the OBSERVED rate: 29 of the 231 convictions with a sexual assault component that produced a determinate post-conviction DNA result yielded exculpatory DNA evidence that would support the convicted person’s exoneration. 11.6 percent is the ADJUSTED rate: the observed rate corrected by inverse probability weighting to estimate the rate across the larger sample (N=430) of both determinate and indeterminate cases.SCOPE: murder and sexual assault felony convictions disposed in Virginia between 1973 and 1987 across 56 circuit courts, restricted to the 714 convictions for which biological evidence from the original case survived and could be DNA tested. The rate was calculated only on convictions with a sexual assault component; homicide-only convictions were excluded because too few of them (n=20) produced a determinate DNA result.AUTHORS’ OWN CHARACTERISATION: the report states these estimates “may be considered an upper bound on the rate of wrongful conviction for these cases, since it is possible that even after Urban researchers’ careful review of courthouse information on cases with exculpatory DNA evidence, there could be some rightful convictions included.” The report states no confidence intervals.DO NOT present 11.6 percent as a general, national or current wrongful conviction rate. It is an upper bound, for one offence category, in one state, for convictions from the 1970s and 1980s, among the subset of cases that still had biological evidence available for testing.EDITION CITED: the 2017 report (Part II) — Walsh, Hussemann, Flynn, Yahner and Golian, “Estimating the Prevalence of Wrongful Conviction,” summary technical report, Urban Institute, NIJ Award No. 2013-IJ-CX-0004, NCJRS document 251115, dated September 2017. This is NOT the earlier 2012 Urban Institute study (Roman et al., “Post-Conviction DNA Testing and Wrongful Conviction,” Part I), which examined the same Virginia convictions but reported a different estimate that the 2017 report revises. The 11.6 percent figure belongs to the 2017 report only.CROSS-REFERENCE: the same finding is recorded as data point 3595 in collection 60, “False Allegations and Wrongful Convictions in Sexual Assault Cases: A Research Compilation.” The two entries were reconciled against the primary report on 2026-09-19; amend them together.

IOs and CIUs worked together on nine exonerations in 2025, 9% of the total.

The National Registry of Exonerations has documented more than 51 exonerations in Georgia since 1989.

The National Registry of Exonerations lists 60 Georgia exonerations that occurred from 1989 onward, counted from the Registry's own case-level database on 19 September 2026. Three of the 60 occurred in 2026 and five in 2025. A further 12 Georgia cases sit in the Registry's pre-1989 series, which the Registry codes separately and excludes from its headline statistics, so the all-eras Georgia total is 72. Supersedes the collection's earlier undated figure of "more than 51" (data point 2245), which is kept for the series.

The 60 Georgia exonerees recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations for 1989 onward lost 704.2 years to wrongful imprisonment between them, on the Registry's own years-lost measure, counted 19 September 2026. Fifteen of the 60 lost 20 years or more; the longest was 39.3 years. Including the 12 pre-1989 Georgia cases the all-eras total is 740.5 years. Supersedes the collection's earlier undated figure of approximately 610 years (data point 2246), which is kept for the series.

Across the 60 Georgia exonerations recorded by the National Registry of Exonerations for 1989 onward, the average time lost to wrongful imprisonment is 11.7 years and the median is 10.7 years, counted 19 September 2026. The range runs from under a year to 39.3 years. The collection's earlier undated data point 2249 states that the Georgia average "exceeds 12 years"; on the current Registry data it does not — 704.2 years over 60 cases is 11.74. Data point 2249 is kept for the series and this one records the current value.

Of the 3,862 exonerations since 1989 in the National Registry of Exonerations, 930 involved a defendant who had pleaded guilty: 24.1 percent, counted from the Registry's case-level database on 19 September 2026. Nearly one exoneree in four was convicted on their own plea rather than at trial. The share is higher in cases without DNA evidence (847 of 3,213, 26.4 percent) than in DNA cases (83 of 649, 12.8 percent). In Georgia the figure is 4 of 60. Across all eras, including the Registry's 478 pre-1989 cases, the count is 930 of 4,340, or 21.4 percent.

Most exonerations are not DNA cases, and they run on a different clock. Of the 3,862 exonerations since 1989 in the National Registry of Exonerations, 3,213 involved no DNA evidence; those exonerees lost an average of 8.2 years to wrongful imprisonment, with a median of 4.0 years. The 649 DNA exonerees lost an average of 15.3 years, median 14.9. Across all 3,862 the average is 9.4 years and the median 5.6. Counted from the Registry database on 19 September 2026. This is the general figure the collection previously lacked: data point 2269 records 14 years for DNA exonerees only, which is the slower and less representative half of the record.

Overall, 56 (58%) of the exonerations in 2025 involved a professional exonerator (IO or CIU).

Georgia exonerees collectively served approximately 610 years of wrongful imprisonment.

Of the 97 exonerations in 2025, 32% were no-crime cases (31 exonerations). These included wrongful convictions for drug possession, homicide, sexual assault, and child sex abuse.

87% of those exonerated in Georgia are men.

Seventy-eight percent of exonerations in 2025 (76/97) were people of color.

Black people make up about 32% of Georgia's population but account for 50% of known exonerees.

Sixty-one percent of the exonerees in 2025 (59/97) were Black.

The average wrongful imprisonment in Georgia exoneration cases exceeds 12 years per case.

Persons exonerated in 2025 lost an average of 14.2 years to wrongful imprisonment—1,373 years in total.

Chatham County (Savannah) has a disproportionate representation among Georgia exonerations, accounting for 20% of all Georgia exonerations despite being only the fifth most populous county.

Thirty-seven percent (36/97) of the persons exonerated in 2025 lost more than 20 years each. Of those, 13 spent more than 30 years in prison, and three spent more than 40 years in prison.

The U.S. Department of Justice investigation released in 2024 found that Georgia's prison system violates constitutional rights and fails to protect incarcerated people from violence and harm. The DOJ described the findings as 'among the worst' ever uncovered.

An exoneration is a finding of actual innocence. An unconstitutional conviction is not the same thing, and the two populations must never be conflated. A person convicted through a Brady violation, ineffective assistance of counsel, a coerced confession or a Batson violation, who is guilty or whose innocence simply cannot be proven, never becomes an exoneration: a successful constitutional challenge produces vacatur and a new trial, not an innocence finding, so nothing in that sequence generates a registry record. That population is therefore larger than the exoneration population and is counted nowhere. There is no denominator, and GPS publishes no estimate of it.THE RULE. The National Registry's contributing-factor percentages, official misconduct 70 percent, perjury or false accusation 73 percent, inadequate legal defense 35 percent, false or misleading forensic evidence 29 percent, mistaken witness identification 27 percent and false confession 14 percent, all on the 158-case 2024 denominator, describe constitutional violations WITHIN the population where innocence could be proven. They must never be generalized to convictions at large, multiplied by any prison or conviction population, or used to estimate how many unconstitutional convictions exist. Doing so is the same scope inversion as citing Gross et al.'s death-sentenced 4.1 percent as a general prison-population rate, which GPS corrected across its published surfaces on 19 September 2026. Every use states the denominator: '70 percent of the 158 exonerations recorded for 2024', never '70 percent of convictions'.The Registry is also not a clean innocence population. Of the 3,862 post-1989 records in the case-level database as of 19 September 2026, 651 are drug exonerations with a median of 0.47 years and only 43 of them, 6.6 percent, exceeding four years, because those are mass dismissals following police-misconduct scandals rather than individually adjudicated innocence.DO NOT ESTIMATE THE UNMEASURABLE; SAY WHY IT CANNOT BE MEASURED. In Georgia the route that would surface unconstitutional convictions is largely closed. O.C.G.A. 9-14-42(c) sets a four-year habeas deadline running from finality rather than from discovery of the violation, and across twenty years of the visible Georgia appellate record, 76 decisions citing 9-14-42, the statutory late-filing exceptions were invoked in 6 cases, opened twice, and produced relief once. The absence of data is produced by the thing being complained about. That is a finding, not a limitation.WHAT HABEAS IS FOR. Habeas corpus tests the lawfulness of detention, not innocence. Accepting an innocence framing for habeas concedes the State's framing and narrows the writ to something it was never limited to. GPS's position, that a conviction obtained through a constitutional violation is illegitimate, is published as the argument for Vision 2027 Priority 2, which shifts the burden so the State must prove the violation harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, and never as a description of current law, under which the violation runs through Brady materiality, Strickland prejudice and harmless-error review and the ordinary remedy is retrial. The gap between the two is the reform. Innocence prevalence figures are supporting evidence for that argument, not the thesis.

Of the 36 exonerees who lost more than 20 years, 13 spent more than 30 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

The National Registry of Exonerations' 2025 Annual Report restates 2024: official misconduct was present in 70% of the 158 exonerations recorded for that year. Denominator 158.The 2025 report gives the percentage but not the case count for this factor, unlike the five other contributing factors it restates. 70% of 158 is about 111 cases; the report does not print that number, so it is not quoted as the Registry's own.Previously recorded here as 71%, on the 2024 Annual Report's 147-case denominator. Registry counts for a year keep moving after the annual report for that year is published.

Three of the 13 exonerees who spent more than 30 years in prison spent more than 40 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.

The National Registry of Exonerations' 2025 Annual Report restates 2024: 115 of the 158 exonerations recorded for 2024, or 73%, included perjury or false accusations.Previously recorded here as 72%, on the 2024 Annual Report's 147-case denominator.

Total payments in the form of state compensation or civil damage awards to exonerees since 1989 now exceed $5.5 billion.

The National Registry of Exonerations' 2025 Annual Report restates 2024: 44 of the 158 exonerations recorded for 2024, or 29%, included false or misleading forensic evidence.The percentage is unchanged from what GPS held. What changed is that the figure now carries its denominator and its case count, which it did not before. 29% of 147 and 29% of 158 are different quantities of people, and a percentage published without its denominator cannot be checked.

Fifty-one defendants were exonerated of homicide—45 for murder and six for manslaughter—53% of all exonerations and 63% of violent crimes (51/81).

The National Registry of Exonerations' 2025 Annual Report restates 2024: 43 of the 158 exonerations recorded for 2024, or 27%, involved mistaken witness identifications.Previously recorded here as 26%, on the 2024 Annual Report's 147-case denominator.

One exoneree from 2025 was sentenced to death.

The National Registry of Exonerations' 2025 Annual Report restates 2024: 22 of the 158 exonerations recorded for 2024, or 14%, included false confessions.Previously recorded here as 15%, on the 2024 Annual Report's 147-case denominator.

Thirteen defendants were exonerated of sexual offenses; eight in cases where the principal crime was sexual assault of an adult, and five where the principal crime was child sex abuse.

The National Registry of Exonerations' 2025 Annual Report restates 2024: 56 of the 158 exonerations recorded for 2024, or 35%, included inadequate legal defense.Inadequate legal defense, or ILD, is the Registry variable that captures much of the same conduct that would qualify for an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. The restated 2024 figure is higher than what GPS held, not lower: 35%, not 33%.Previously recorded here as 33%, on the 2024 Annual Report's 147-case denominator.

Seventeen defendants were exonerated for other violent crimes, such as assault, robbery, and attempted murder.

Most wrongful convictions involve multiple contributing factors that compound each other.

In total, 84% (81/97) of the exonerations in 2025 were for violent crimes.

Devonia Inman was convicted in 2001 for the 1998 robbery and murder of Donna Brown, a Taco Bell manager in Adel, Georgia. Sentenced to life without parole in a capital murder trial. DNA evidence found on a ski mask in the victim's stolen car excluded Inman and matched another man, Hercules Brown. Prosecutors had suppressed multiple police records and physical evidence pointing to another perpetrator — a Brady violation. Judge Kristina Cook Graham granted a new trial in November 2021, and the Alapaha Judicial Circuit DA moved to dismiss all charges on December 20, 2021.

Sixteen defendants were exonerated of non-violent offenses, including four misdemeanors.

Sonny Bharadia was convicted in 2002 for a sexual assault in Savannah while he was working on a car in Stone Mountain, hundreds of miles away. DNA evidence on batting gloves recovered from the crime proved his innocence, but the Georgia Supreme Court ruled he 'took too long' to uncover the DNA evidence. Released in November 2024 and fully exonerated in May 2025.

In 2024, official misconduct was present in 70% of the 158 exonerations, as restated in the 2025 Annual Report.

Terry Talley was wrongly convicted of a series of violent sexual assaults in 1981 in LaGrange. Exonerated in 2021 after a reinvestigation and DNA evidence cleared him. The Georgia Innocence Project, LaGrange Police Chief Lou Dekmar, and Coweta Judicial Circuit DA Herb Cranford all agreed Talley never should have been convicted.

Most of the 2025 exonerations that included official misconduct involved more than one kind of misconduct, such as the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence to the defense (55 cases).

Calvin Johnson was imprisoned for life in Georgia for a rape he did not commit. Exonerated only because a summer intern walking through a parking lot at the back of the Clayton County DA's office noticed a box marked 'Evidence' next to the trash. The box contained the DNA evidence Johnson's legal team had been seeking for years.

Witness tampering was a contributing factor in 42 of the 2025 exonerations involving official misconduct.

Joey Watkins was exonerated after 22 years for a crime he had nothing to do with.

Perjury by an official actor was a contributing factor in 30 of the 2025 exonerations involving official misconduct.

Lee Clark was exonerated in 2022 for a crime that never happened. Walked out of Floyd County Jail into the arms of friends and family on December 8, 2022.

Misconduct in interrogations was a contributing factor in 11 of the 2025 exonerations involving official misconduct.

Johnny Gates was sentenced to death in 1977 as a 21-year-old Black man for the murder of a 19-year-old white female. One of the longest-serving wrongful conviction cases in Georgia history.

Knowingly permitting perjured testimony was a contributing factor in 10 of the 2025 exonerations involving official misconduct.

Mario Stinchcomb was convicted of murder in 2002 in Atlanta's Pittsburgh neighborhood. Exonerated in 2021 when the Fulton County DA's Conviction Integrity Unit reinvestigated the case and determined Stinchcomb had acted in self-defense.

Prosecutorial dishonesty in court was a contributing factor in 7 of the 2025 exonerations involving official misconduct.

Michael Woolfolk was a co-defendant with Stinchcomb, also exonerated in 2021 through the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit.

Forensic misconduct was a contributing factor in 2 of the 2025 exonerations involving official misconduct.

Black people make up approximately 13% of the U.S. population but account for approximately 47-50% of known exonerees nationally.

Twenty-two exonerations in 2025 (23%) were for convictions based at least in part on mistaken witness identifications.

The average DNA exoneree nationally serves 14 years before exoneration.

In 2024, 27% (43/158) of the exonerations involved mistaken witness identifications, as restated in the 2025 Annual Report.

Time from conviction to exoneration in death-penalty cases, stated as a distribution rather than as an average, because the average is not a fair summary of this spread.POPULATION: the 145 exonerations in the National Registry of Exonerations where a death sentence was imposed and the exoneration is recorded as post-1989. The Registry holds 248 death-penalty exonerations in all; 103 of them are pre-1989 cases and are excluded here, because the Registry says its pre-1989 records are coded less completely. Every one of the 145 carries a years-lost value, so there is no missing data in this cut.FIELD: the Registry's own years-lost measure, Synopsis_Fields.syn_years_lost, which runs from conviction year to exoneration date in years. It is the same field the Registry uses for the years-lost totals it publishes. Snapshot taken 19 September 2026; the most recent exoneration in it is dated 9 September 2026.THE DISTRIBUTION (n = 145): mean 15.16 years, median 13.996, maximum 48.13, minimum 0.00 0 to under 4 years 18 cases 12.4% (10 of these are under one year) 4 to under 10 years 31 cases 21.4% 10 to under 20 years 57 cases 39.3% 20 years and over 39 cases 26.9% total 2,197.7 years across the 145 No case sits exactly on 4.00 or on 20.00 years, so the bands and any over-or-under counts at those thresholds agree exactly.LONGEST: Glynn Simmons, Oklahoma, 48.13 years, exonerated 19 September 2023. Then Charles Finch, North Carolina, 42.89; Clifford Williams Jr., Florida, 42.57; Ricky Jackson, Ohio, 39.27.WHY NOT AN AVERAGE: the spread runs from under a year to more than 48, and the mean of 15.16 sits above the median of 14.00 because the long tail pulls it up. Reporting one number hides that a quarter of these people waited 20 years or more while an eighth were cleared within four.REPLACES an unsupported figure. Four of the 145 cases, 2.8%, exceed 38 years. "Over 38 years" was never the average for death-row exonerations.

Nineteen exonerations (20%) included false confessions in 2025.

The pattern is consistent: meaningful investigation of wrongful convictions takes far longer than Georgia's four-year habeas corpus deadline allows.

In 2024, 14% (22/158) of the exonerations included false confessions, as restated in the 2025 Annual Report.

The Georgia Innocence Project (GIP), founded in 2002, is the first and only innocence organization in Georgia.

Seventy-one exonerations (73%) included perjury or false accusations in 2025. This is the same as 2024 when 73% (115/158) of the exonerations included perjury or false accusations.

Since its founding, GIP has helped free or exonerate 16 innocent individuals who collectively lost 372 years to wrongful imprisonment.

Thirty-nine exonerations (40%) included false or misleading forensic evidence in 2025. This is an increase from 2024, when 29% (44/158) included false or misleading forensic evidence.

GIP has received over 7,900 requests for assistance since 2002.

Thirty-two exonerations (33%) included inadequate legal defense (ILD) in 2025. This is down slightly from 2024, when 35% (56/158) of the exonerations included inadequate legal defense.

Aimee Maxwell, founding Executive Director of GIP, later joined the Fulton County DA's office in 2019 as director of their Conviction Integrity Unit.

The Registry published four cases, representing 112 individuals, in its Groups Registry in 2025. In each case, exonerations are tied together by a pattern of systematic official misconduct either in the investigation and prosecution or misconduct committed by a single official actor.

Georgia historically had no statutory process for compensating exonerees. Each exoneree had to find a state legislator to sponsor an individual compensation resolution that would have to pass through the full legislative process.

At the time of this report, the Registry lists 49 cases, involving 37,356 defendants in the Groups Registry.

In 2025, the Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act was signed into law by Governor Kemp on May 14, 2025, as part of SB 244.

In 2025, the Registry added eight pre-1989 exonerations, dating as far back as 1911.

The Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act establishes $75,000 per year of wrongful incarceration.

At the time of this report, the Registry lists 474 pre-1989 exonerations, from 1820 to the end of 1988.

The Act provides an additional $25,000 per year spent on death row.

During the 2025 calendar year, the Registry added 47 exonerations that occurred between 1989 and 2024—exonerations not learned of until after December 31, 2024.

Administrative law judges within the Office of State Administrative Hearings hear compensation claims under the Act.

All told, the National Registry of Exonerations recorded 3,767 exonerations in the United States from 1989 through the end of 2025.

Claimants have three years from July 1, 2025, or from the date of exoneration, to file compensation claims.

The National Registry of Exonerations recorded 3,792 exonerations at the time of this report (April 6, 2026).

If every Georgia exoneree since 1989 pursued compensation under the Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act, the state's liability would be approximately $52.8 million.ARITHMETIC: 704.1504 years x $75,000 per year = $52,811,280.THE YEARS FIGURE: 704.15 years is the total lost by the 60 people exonerated of Georgia convictions since 1989, taken from the National Registry of Exonerations' own years-lost field in the case database, snapshot of 19 September 2026. All 60 carry a value; none is missing. Previously this row used 610 years across 51 exonerees, which was an older Registry position.THE RATE: $75,000 per year of wrongful incarceration is the rate set by the Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act, signed by Governor Kemp on 14 May 2025 as part of SB 244. It is recorded separately at data point 2278. THIS IS THE COMPENSATION RATE AND IT IS CORRECT HERE. It is not the annual cost of incarcerating someone in Georgia and must not be replaced with $31,614 or any other per-inmate cost figure. Those are different quantities answering different questions, and the conflation being corrected elsewhere in this library does not apply to this row.FOR SCALE: against a state budget of roughly $37 billion, $52.8 million is about one seventh of one percent. The comparison is the point of the row: the whole liability is small next to what Georgia spends.THIS IS A CEILING, NOT A FORECAST. It assumes every one of the 60 applies and every one qualifies. The Act is new and no claim history exists yet.

In 2025, there were 97 exonerations in 30 states and one from federal court.

The Wrongful Conviction and Incarceration Compensation Act was tacked onto SB 244, which was originally inspired by the Trump-Fulton County prosecution.

Illinois had the most exonerations in 2025 (17), followed by Texas (11), Ohio (9), and New York and Michigan (7 each).

Of 255 Innocence Project client exonerations and releases where the real perpetrator was identified, those actual perpetrators committed additional violent crimes while innocent people sat in prison — including 56 sexual assaults, 22 murders, and 23 other violent crimes.

While drug crime exonerations were the primary reason in prior years, 11 (65%) of the 17 Illinois exonerations in 2025 were in homicide cases. Thirteen of the 17 exonerations were in Cook County.

The National Registry of Exonerations recorded 3,767 exonerations in the United States from 1989 through the end of 2025, and 3,792 at the time of its 2025 Annual Report on 6 April 2026. The Registry notes in the same passage that the figure will soon be out of date, because it adds exonerations continuously.YEARS LOST: the 2025 Annual Report gives no cumulative years-lost total, so the figure below is GPS's own computation, not the Registry's prose. In the GPS snapshot of the Registry's case database taken 19 September 2026, the 3,862 exonerations recorded since 1989 carry 36,179.8 years lost between them, using the Registry's own years-lost field. The snapshot count is higher than the report's because five more months of exonerations had been added by then; the most recent in the snapshot is dated 9 September 2026.Previously recorded here as "over 3,646 exonerations... more than 32,000 years," which was the 2024 Annual Report's cumulative position. Both halves of that pair have moved.THE REGISTRY CALLS ITS OWN TOTALS A FLOOR, not a complete count of wrongful convictions in the United States.

Eight of the 17 Illinois exonerations in 2025 involved corrupt former Chicago police detective Reynaldo Guevara. Since 2004, 55 exonerations have been tied to Guevara's misconduct, which included using physical abuse to extract false confessions from suspects or false accusations from witnesses.

The National Registry of Exonerations recorded 158 exonerations for calendar year 2024, as restated in its 2025 Annual Report. The 2024 Annual Report had reported 147; the Registry found 11 more 2024 cases after that report was published.YEARS LOST: the 2025 Annual Report does not restate an average years-lost figure for 2024. It gives that figure only for 2025 (an average of 14.2 years across 97 exonerees, 1,373 years in total). The 13.5-year average GPS previously carried for 2024 came from the 2024 Annual Report and applied to the 147 cases that report counted.FROM THE REGISTRY'S OWN CASE DATABASE instead, snapshot of 19 September 2026: 159 exonerations now carry a 2024 exoneration date, one more than the 2025 Annual Report counted. Across those 159, mean years lost is 13.40, median 12.67, and the total is 2,130.2 years. Note that the total is over 2,100 years, not the "nearly 2,000" GPS previously published on the 147-case count.DO NOT MIX THE TWO: 158 is the report's count, 13.40 and 2,130.2 are the database's across 159 cases. Do not multiply 158 by 13.40.

Five of the 11 exonerations in Texas in 2025 were tied to the misconduct of Gerald Goines, a former narcotics officer with the Houston Police Department. A total of 38 exonerations in the Registry are the result of Goines's misconduct.

Total payments to exonerees since 1989, in the form of state compensation or civil damage awards, now exceed $5.5 billion. This is the National Registry of Exonerations' figure as of its 2025 Annual Report, published 6 April 2026.Previously recorded here as more than $4.6 billion, which was the 2024 Annual Report's figure. This is a running cumulative total and it rises with every report.

The 97 exonerations in 2025 is the lowest yearly total in any annual report since 2013, when the Registry reported 87 exonerations.

Innocent people in Georgia are not merely wrongfully imprisoned — they are trapped in conditions that constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as documented by the DOJ's 2024 investigation.

When the 2024 annual report was published in April 2025, the Registry reported 147 exonerations for 2024. Since then, eleven more 2024 exonerations were added that were not known at the time of that report's publication, bringing the restated 2024 total to 158.

In the Devonia Inman case, prosecutors had suppressed multiple police records and physical evidence pointing to another perpetrator, constituting a Brady violation.

The biggest peak in exonerations was in 2022, with 105 drug crime exonerations in a single year, 99 of them in Cook County, Illinois. These cases involved more than 200 people falsely convicted of possessing drugs and weapons planted by Chicago Police Sergeant Ronald Watts and his fellow officers.

In the Sonny Bharadia case, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled he 'took too long' to uncover the DNA evidence that proved his innocence.

In 2024, a smaller group of drug crime exonerations (17) occurred in Harris County, Texas (Houston), pushing Texas to the top of the list for that year.

Black exonerees nationally are convicted more often, of more serious crimes, serve longer sentences before exoneration, and face greater barriers to overturning their convictions.

Prior to 2024, the last time Texas had the most exonerations in a single year was 2016, which capped a four-year period when nearly 140 defendants were cleared of drug possession convictions after the Harris County CIU discovered that scores of people had pled guilty to drug possession charges before lab results came back showing that what they had possessed were not controlled substances.

Homicide remains the largest category of exonerations in the Registry, with 40% of the total (1,535/3,792) as of the date of this report, and nearly half (49%) of the non-drug crime exonerations.

More than half (56/97) of the exonerations in 2025 involved work by CIUs or IOs, with both being involved in eight of those exonerations.

The number of exonerations in the National Registry of Exonerations is a basement figure. The Registry does not know how many exonerations there have been—only the ones discovered. With more than 3,100 counties and 94 federal judicial districts, it is impossible to ferret out all cases that would meet the criteria.

The Registry advises caution about relying on statistics in annual reports because the constant addition of older exonerations means that relying on the online interactive database will always generate the most up-to-date and accurate statistics.

Pre-1989 exonerations are researched and coded carefully, but due to several factors including the passage of time and the unavailability of many court documents, the data is not as robust as the data for exonerations since 1989. Not all variables coded for post-1989 exonerations are coded for pre-1989 exonerations.

The Registry learns about exonerations from a variety of sources, including its own research, innocence organizations, conviction integrity units, the news media, defense attorneys, and sometimes the exonerees themselves.

In its March/April 2025 issue, Mother Jones magazine published an article about the case of Taylor Cadle, who was falsely convicted of reporting that she had been raped. She had been exonerated in 2017. Had Taylor not come forward and had Mother Jones not published it, the Registry would not have known about the case.

Professor Jeffrey Gutman of the George Washington University Law School, a Special Contributor to the Registry, studies compensation for exonerees and frequently finds cases of individuals who were compensated but were unknown to the Registry. He has identified dozens of such cases over the past several years.

Gregorio Cardona and five other men—his brother Robert Cardona, Fernando Gomez, Lowell Higgins-Bey, Michael McCastle and Harry Rodriguez—were wrongly convicted based on misconduct by Chicago police detective Reynaldo Guevara and his partner Ernest Halvorsen. The misconduct included coercing false confessions through violence and coercing false identifications from witnesses. The six men were convicted of crimes ranging from burglary to murder in the 1987 slaying of a man found bound and stabbed more than 40 times on the north side of Chicago. DNA testing excluded all of them from a DNA profile found on the murder weapons. Combined, they had served more than 110 years in prison. Rodriguez was exonerated posthumously because he had died in prison.

Subramanyam 'Subu' Vedam was convicted twice (1983 and 1988) in central Pennsylvania of murder in the death of a friend whose body was found in 1981 near State College. He was exonerated on October 2, 2025, after his legal team uncovered impeachment evidence against a key witness and mistakes by the state's forensic witness in analysis of the victim's bullet wounds. Vedam spent more than 40 years in prison. Despite his exoneration, Vedam, 64 at the time of his release, was taken immediately into custody by Immigration and Customs Enforcement based on a 1988 detainer. In February 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice Board of Immigration Appeals vacated the 1998 deportation order, restoring Vedam's permanent U.S. residency.

Sherman Townsend was convicted in 1998 of a home invasion in Minneapolis, Minnesota, based on a witness who falsely named him to confuse police because he was the real perpetrator. No physical evidence connected Townsend, and people inside the house couldn't identify him. Townsend turned down a plea deal and was convicted. He was released from prison in 2007 on time served. The Minnesota Board of Pardons gave him a full pardon on July 9, 2025.

Raymond Gaines was convicted in 1976 of robbery and murder of a shoe repair shop owner in Roxbury, Boston, Massachusetts. He was released on bond in 2021 after serving nearly 45 years. In 2022, his convictions were vacated based on recantations by two prosecution witnesses and newly discovered evidence of misconduct by one of the detectives. The prosecution dismissed the charges in October 2025.

Patience Frazier pled guilty to manslaughter after being charged with inducing an abortion by taking drugs in Humboldt County, Nevada, in 2019. Although the prosecution promised to seek probation, the judge sentenced her to 2.5 to 8 years in prison. In 2021, her conviction was vacated by a different judge following testimony that it was impossible to say there were signs of life after birth. An expert in addiction medicine said there was no evidence to support the claim that any of Frazier's behaviors had caused a stillbirth. The case remained pending for four years before the judge finally dismissed it in April 2025.

In January 2025, prosecutors in DuPage County, Illinois, dismissed 18 convictions for driving under the influence of marijuana after learning of problems with testing done by the forensic laboratory that processed drug tests. The analyst at the lab said testing urine would give an accurate reading of whether a person had recently used marijuana, but other experts refuted her conclusions and said that the presence of marijuana derivatives in urine did not indicate when a person had used the drug.

While police commonly use a Breathalyzer to measure a motorist's blood-alcohol content, no such simple test exists for marijuana. The analyst at the DuPage County lab said testing urine would give an accurate reading of whether a person had recently used marijuana, but other experts refuted her conclusions and said that the presence of marijuana derivatives in a person's urine did not indicate when a person had used the drug.

We know of official misconduct in 70, or 72% of exonerations that occurred in 2025.

Table 1: Exonerations in 2025 by Crime. Homicide 51 (53%): Murder 45, Manslaughter 6. Sex Crimes 13 (13%): Sexual Assault of an adult 8, Child Sex Abuse 5. Other Violent Crimes 17 (18%): Robbery 5, Attempted Murder 5, Assault 5, Other Violent 2. Nonviolent Crimes 16 (16%): Drug crimes 6, Burglary 5, Other Non-Violent 5. Total 97 (100%).

Table 2: Exonerations in 2025 by Jurisdiction (n=97). Alaska 1, California 2, Colorado 2, Connecticut 1, Florida 1, Georgia 1, Illinois 17, Federal (TX) 1, Indiana 1, Kentucky 1, Louisiana 1, Maryland 2, Massachusetts 6, Michigan 7, Minnesota 3, Nevada 1, New Jersey 1, New Mexico 2, New York 7, North Carolina 1, Ohio 9, Oklahoma 1, Oregon 3, Pennsylvania 4, Rhode Island 1, South Carolina 2, South Dakota 1, Tennessee 4, Texas 11, Virginia 1, Wisconsin 1.

As in previous years, a few states accounted for more than half of the total exonerations. Illinois regained the top spot, which it has held for six of the last seven years.

While drug exonerations explain much of the year-to-year variability in the number of exonerations in the past, homicide still remains the largest category of exonerations in the Registry.

While homicide exonerations dipped in 2025, these high-stakes, work-intensive cases still constituted more than half of all exonerations in 2025 (51/97).

In 2025, as part of the launch of the Registry's new website, the data table began to allow searches combining the previously distinct 'Pre-1989 Database' with the main exonerations dataset. All individual exonerations are searchable and can be combined or distinguished using the 'Exoneration Era' filter.

Since 2004, 55 exonerations have been tied to Reynaldo Guevara's misconduct, which included using physical abuse to extract false confessions from suspects or false accusations from witnesses.

A total of 38 exonerations in the Registry are the result of Gerald Goines's misconduct.

The 2022 drug crime exonerations in Cook County involved more than 200 people who had been falsely convicted of possessing drugs and weapons that had been planted by Chicago Police Sergeant Ronald Watts and his fellow officers.

When the 2024 annual report was published in April 2025, the Registry reported 147 exonerations for 2024.

The 2024 count as restated in the 2025 Annual Report is 158 exonerations, up from 147 reported in April 2025.