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From false testimony to shaky forensic evidence, these cases reveal some of the most horrifying miscarriages of justice ever seen. Join us as we look at the shocking stories of people who spent years on death row before being proven innocent and finally walking free. From DNA breakthroughs to exposed police misconduct, these exonerations changed lives and sparked outrage.
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00:00Two men were freed from prison in North Carolina today after spending more than 30 years behind bars for a
00:07crime they did not commit.
00:08Welcome to Ms. Mojo, and today we're exploring the most shocking times in history when convicted prisoners,
00:14who received capital punishment sentences, were later found to be innocent and were exonerated from the crimes they never committed.
00:2030 years ago, prosecution seemed deemed to take my life from me.
00:27Joseph Brown.
00:28Imagine spending years on death row for a murder you had nothing to do with,
00:33and then learning that the prosecution knowingly used false testimony from a witness.
00:37That's exactly what happened to Brown, also known as Shabaka Waklimi.
00:41Who among all those people in the state of Florida that believe in capital punishment
00:46will stand up and be a sacrificial lamb for me to vent a 14 years of anger, bitterness, and frustration
00:52on?
00:53I will get no response.
00:55Convicted in 1973 for the murder of Florida clothing store owner Earlene Treva-Barksdale,
01:00Brown was set to be executed in 1983 before a judge ordered a stay 15 hours before.
01:06In 1986, a federal judge vacated his conviction after discovering what the prosecution had done.
01:11Finally, a year later, Brown walked free.
01:13Brown has found a measure of peace here in this South Carolina town of Rock Hill.
01:18It is here that he lives when he is not traveling and speaking out against the death penalty.
01:23However, after years of speaking against the death penalty,
01:27Brown was charged with killing his wife, Mimi Caldwell Brown, in 2012.
01:31After pleading guilty, he was sentenced to between 15 and 19 years.
01:35I almost look at the death penalty as society's right to defend itself against certain types of people.
01:42Brown knows the majority of Americans believe capital punishment is appropriate punishment.
01:47Walter McMillan.
01:48A few cases exposed racial bias in the American legal system as starkly as this one.
01:53Walter McMillan, a black man from Monroeville, Alabama,
01:55was arrested in 1987 for the murder of an 18-year-old white woman.
01:59Was he, in fact, the man who walked into a dry-cleaning store in Monroeville, Alabama,
02:03in November of 1986 and robbed and murdered the clerk?
02:07Or did they get the wrong man?
02:09And is the real murderer still out there somewhere?
02:12Before he was even tried, he was placed on death row during the pretrial period.
02:16The evidence against him?
02:17Testimony from a convicted felon seeking a deal.
02:20There's no physical evidence.
02:21There's no corroborating circumstances.
02:23There's nothing but the word of one person.
02:26That one person is Ralph Myers, a career criminal who's now doing 30 years for another murder.
02:33Multiple witnesses confirmed McMillan was at a fish fry miles away at the time of the murder,
02:37but this was ignored.
02:38Attorney Bryan Stevenson took up his cause,
02:40eventually proving in 1993 that evidence had been suppressed and testimony fabricated.
02:45McMillan's story later inspired the powerful 2019 film Just Mercy.
02:49In the case of the people versus McMillan,
02:52the court hereby grants the defendant's motion.
02:57All charges against you are dismissed, Mr. McMillan.
03:00Iwao Hakamada.
03:01A Japanese court has acquitted the world's longest serving death row convict, Iwao Hakamada.
03:07Not every story on this list comes from American soil.
03:10Iwao Hakamada, a former professional boxer from Japan,
03:13was convicted in 1968 for the murders of his employer and their family.
03:1688-year-old Iwao Hakamada was convicted in 1968 of murdering his boss and his boss's family.
03:25His conviction rested largely on a confession he later claimed was beaten out of him by police.
03:30Hakamada spent over 45 years on death row,
03:33the longest of anyone in the world at the time,
03:35enduring psychological torment that left him severely mentally impaired.
03:39I've done things that I couldn't tell you.
03:42Another man, Hakamada Iwao,
03:45has spent every one of those 44 years in a jail cell under constant threat of execution.
03:51In 2014, a retrial was granted after DNA evidence cast serious doubt on the conviction.
03:56Eventually, in 2024, Hakamada was acquitted at his retrial, earning him his freedom.
04:01The following year, he issued a lawsuit against Japan's public prosecutor's office,
04:05seeking around $37,000 and a public apology.
04:08The world's longest-serving death row inmate,
04:11who has been acquitted in the 1966 murder of a family of four in Shizuoka prefecture,
04:17is seeking 217 million yen.
04:21Nicholas Yaris.
04:22And I shamefully made up a story, went forward to the police.
04:25They found out I was lying, and they decided, you did it.
04:28DNA evidence has been the saving grace for countless wrongfully convicted individuals,
04:33and Yaris is a powerful example of why that technology matters.
04:36Convicted in 1982 for the murder of a Pennsylvania woman,
04:40Yaris actually requested DNA testing himself,
04:42a bold move that ultimately proved his innocence.
04:45He spent 22 years on death row, enduring violence and isolation.
04:49You spent 22 years on death row before you were exonerated by DNA evidence.
04:58Hello, everyone. My name is Nick Yaris.
05:01During that time, he taught himself to read and became an avid writer.
05:04He even attempted to escape in 1985.
05:07And I elevated my entire life because I was on death row.
05:10And even though I was there wrongly, it didn't matter.
05:14I needed to use that opportunity, and I have since.
05:16In 2003, DNA results conclusively excluded him as the perpetrator,
05:20and he was released in 2004.
05:22Yaris has since become an outspoken advocate for abolishing the death penalty,
05:26channeling unimaginable suffering into purpose-driven activism.
05:30When I was fighting for DNA in 1989, I educated the court on mitochondrial DNA.
05:36I was far more advanced in myself than the man who'd sent me to death row.
05:41Deborah Milkey.
05:42Sometimes the most dangerous evidence in a courtroom is a detective's uncorroborated word.
05:46Milkey, born in Germany before relocating to the U.S.,
05:49was convicted in 1990 for the murder of her son Christopher in Arizona.
05:52And then after we left the courtroom, I remember going back to the county jail and just totally falling apart.
06:02Since that day, Milkey has lived on Arizona's death row.
06:05The case hinged almost entirely on a confession that Detective Armando Saldate claimed she made,
06:11but which was never recorded, witnessed, or documented.
06:14Milkey maintained she never confessed.
06:16What prosecutors failed to disclose was that Saldate had a lengthy history of misconduct,
06:20including lying under oath.
06:22The reason why this case was sent back for a new trial
06:26was because the prosecutor didn't disclose to the defense
06:30that Detective Saldate had a history of lying.
06:34In 2013, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned her conviction,
06:38citing the concealment of that shocking information.
06:40After nearly 25 years in the legal system,
06:42charges were eventually dropped in 2015 and Milkey walked free.
06:45One day, it just all melted into the other.
06:50I don't know, I mean, the years went by,
06:52but it was like one continuous flow for me.
06:56Ron Williamson.
06:57This case is so shocking that it became a John Grisham book,
07:01and then a Netflix series.
07:02This was halfway through my career,
07:04The Innocent Man.
07:05It was book number 20, I think.
07:07And it was my only foray into non-fiction.
07:11Williamson, a former minor league baseball player from Ada, Oklahoma,
07:14whose sporting prospects were derailed by injury,
07:17was convicted in 1988 for the murder of Deborah Carter.
07:20The evidence against him was flimsy at best.
07:22Junk science hair analysis
07:23and a jailhouse informant of questionable credibility.
07:26And so much that was just kind of skewed
07:29because there was nobody fighting back as hard as they could have.
07:34It was not apparent that he was an innocent man.
07:37Williamson, who suffered from serious mental illness and substance issues,
07:40came within five days of execution in 1994 before receiving a stay.
07:44In 1999, DNA testing definitively cleared both him and co-defendant Dennis Fritz.
07:49Williamson, broken by years of wrongful imprisonment,
07:52died just five years after his release in 2004.
07:55One of the things I remember is that they brought my dad and Ron in in handcuffs.
07:58And so that was kind of hard to see.
08:01Anthony Ray Hinton.
08:02Nearly 30 years.
08:04That's how long Anthony Ray Hinton sat on Alabama's death row for murders he didn't commit.
08:09Fifty-eight years old, Hinton lived more than half his life inside a cage,
08:13Holman Correctional Facility in southern Alabama.
08:16Here men do time, and time stands still.
08:19Today he's seeing and experiencing things for the first time in decades.
08:24Convicted for two 1984 restaurant robberies turned homicides,
08:28Hinton's case rested on dubious ballistic evidence.
08:30A state expert's claims that bullets matched a gun found at Hinton's home.
08:33The defense, hamstrung by a court-appointed lawyer with almost no funds for expert witnesses,
08:38could not effectively challenge it.
08:40Bryan Stevenson, yes, the same attorney from Walter McMillan's case, took on Hinton's appeal.
08:45You can't traumatize someone, try to kill someone, condemn someone,
08:50lock someone down for 30 years, and not feel some responsibility for what you've done.
08:54In 2015, the Supreme Court unanimously overturned his conviction.
08:58Alongside publishing a memoir on his experience,
09:00Hinton has been a vocal advocate against the Alabama legal system and capital punishment.
09:04In my mind I kept saying, is this a dream?
09:07Because I had fantasized so much in my mind,
09:10and trying to escape, and I kept asking myself, am I fantasizing now?
09:15Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two brothers, two false confessions,
09:19one catastrophic miscarriage of justice.
09:22McCollum and Brown, both intellectually disabled teenagers,
09:25were convicted in 1983 for the murder of a minor in North Carolina.
09:30What very likely could have happened here is two intellectually disabled kids
09:35would have been executed for a heinous crime they didn't commit.
09:38Pressured during lengthy interrogations without legal representation,
09:41both signed confessions that they later recanted.
09:44McCollum, sentenced to capital punishment, spent 31 years on death row,
09:48making him North Carolina's longest-serving death row inmate at the time.
09:51Brown received a life sentence.
09:53Leon Brown was 15 when he was arrested.
09:56I fought this battle with the help of God. I'm here today.
10:00Henry McCollum was 20 when he was sentenced to death.
10:04In 2014, DNA evidence pointed to another man entirely,
10:08Roscoe Artis, who lived near the crime scene and was later convicted of the murder.
10:12As a result, the brothers were exonerated and released.
10:15Roscoe Artis, the man linked to that DNA evidence.
10:19Scott, he's already serving a life sentence in prison.
10:23In 2021, McCollum and Brown were awarded a record-setting
10:26$75 million in compensation for their ordeals.
10:30My family, they have struggled for years and years.
10:37And it's hard out there for them, and I want to help them.
10:42Ray Krohn. He was dubbed the Snaggletooth Killer by tabloids,
10:45a nickname built on one of the most notoriously unreliable forms of forensic evidence
10:49ever used in American courtrooms.
10:51And his hope is that nobody else will ever have to endure what he went through.
10:55Deemed around the nation as the Snaggletooth Killer, Ray Krohn became the face of a horrific
11:00Phoenix murder that happened three days before his arrest on New Year's Eve.
11:04Krohn was convicted for the 1991 murder of Phoenix, Arizona bartender Kim Ancona,
11:08largely based on bite mark analysis that experts claimed matched his teeth,
11:12which was upheld on appeal.
11:13In 2002, DNA testing identified the real killer as Kenneth Phillips,
11:17who'd previously been convicted of assault.
11:19He later pled guilty to the murder.
11:21Prosecutors convinced two juries that bite marks found on the victim matched Krohn's teeth.
11:26But in 2002, he was exonerated by DNA evidence.
11:31They can do it to me, they can do it to anybody.
11:32With his release, Krohn became the 100th inmate to be exonerated from death row
11:36since capital punishment was reinstated in the U.S. in 1976.
11:40As an apology, he was awarded $4.4 million in compensation altogether for Maricopa County and Phoenix.
11:46So I was labeled a cold-hearted killer, old remorseful monster.
11:51I was sentenced to death.
11:54Chained up and taken away to Arizona's death row.
11:56Kirk Bloodsworth.
11:57No case better illustrates the transformative power of DNA evidence
12:00or the terrifying fragility of eyewitness testimony than this one.
12:04In 1985, Kirk Bloodsworth was convicted of the murder of Don Hamilton in Maryland,
12:08yet he always proclaimed his innocence.
12:10My thing was, is if it could convict you, why can't it free you?
12:14Kirk got permission to have DNA testing done on Don Hamilton's clothing.
12:20Five witnesses placed him at the scene, despite having an alibi.
12:23In 1993, after years of relentless appeals, DNA testing exonerated him,
12:27making him the first American death row inmate to be freed through DNA evidence.
12:31It was June of 1993.
12:33Kirk Bloodsworth walked out of a Maryland prison, a free and exonerated man.
12:37The first death row inmate in the United States to be cleared by DNA.
12:42The real killer, Kimberly Shea Ruffner, was later identified.
12:46Interestingly, he was serving an unrelated sentence in the same prison as Bloodsworth.
12:50In 2004, Ruffner pled guilty and was sentenced to life.
12:53Following his release, Bloodsworth, with his terrible experience,
12:56spoke out directly against the death penalty.
12:58A couple of decades later, he reflects on his past
13:00and how it has shaped his role as an advocate to abolish the death penalty worldwide.
13:05Did we miss any other infamous cases?
13:07Let us know below.