Release from prison is a great relief, and that is especially so for wrongfully convicted persons. The future, however, is wrought with difficulties, obstacles, and prejudice. For Chris Conover, it was a burden that overwhelmed him, pushing him to take his life 12 years after his release.

Conover, 60, was convicted in a drug-related double murder in Randallstown, Maryland, in the early morning hours of October 20, 1984, two white men and a black man went into the home of Charles “Squeaky” Jordan, who was involved in the city’s heroin trade. Jordan, his wife, and step-daughter were shot execution style.

Jordan’s wife survived, and she subsequently identified Conover as resembling one of the white attackers and picked him out of a line up. An FBI agent testified that two hairs found at the scene belonged to Conover. Based upon the identification and hair evidence, Conover was convicted.

The Innocence Project took his case, and in May 2001, it received DNA evidence that proved the hairs did not come from Conover. Prosecutors agreed the conviction was undermined and agreed to it being vacated. They, however, insisted he was guilty and were intent on a retrial. Conover agreed in 2003 to an ...

On March 10, 2016, Andre Hatchett, 49, became the 19th person exonerated since Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson strengthened a conviction review unit when he took office in 2014.

Hatchett had been convicted of second degree murder for the 1991 death of Neda Mae Carter. His conviction was based on “a perfect storm of error – bad defense counsel, an unreliable witness, critical evidence that was never disclosed to the defense,” according to Seema Saifee, a staff attorney with the Innocence Project, which helped secure Hatchett’s release. “It’s frightening how easy it is to convict an innocent person in this country,” Saifee said. “And it’s overwhelmingly difficult to release an innocent person.”

When Neda Mae was killed, Hatchett, then 24, was on crutches from an injury he received as a bystander during a shooting.

According to Innocence Project attorneys, Hatchett had an I.Q. of 63 and had cooperated with the police and provided an alibi. He was arrested and convicted mainly on the testimony of an informant, Gerald “Jerry” Williams, who was facing a burglary charge and had initially identified another person as the killer – a fact that prosecutors failed to disclose to Hatchett’s attorneys.

At trial, Hatchett’s defense ...

In an unusual turn of events, a former prisoner was appointed to Connecticut’s Parole Board. While ex-prisoners are typically not considered as parole board members, state officials decided that Kenneth F. Ireland was a qualified candidate.

In 1989, when he was 18 years old, Ireland was convicted of raping and murdering Barbara Pelkey, a mother of four.

Several people had connected Ireland to the 1986 murder, including someone who claimed she witnessed his confession. The witness later admitted that she was intoxicated at the time and confused in her recollection, according to The Daily Mail. Ireland received a 50-year prison sentence.

Although he asserted his innocence, his claims fell on deaf ears until 2009. DNA testing was performed after the Connecticut Innocence Project became involved in the case, and the test results indicated another man, Kevin Benefield, had committed the crimes for which Ireland had been convicted. Benefield was subsequently sentenced to 60 years for raping and murdering Pelkey.

Ireland was exonerated and released in August 2009 after spending 21 years – more than half his life – in prison.

Vivian Blackford, a member of the Connecticut Sentencing Committee, originally raised the idea of having Ireland serve on the Parole ...

Chaunte D. Ott received a $6.5 million settlement from the City of Milwaukee for spending over 12 years in prison on a wrongful murder conviction, after being cleared by DNA evidence that connected the crime to a serial killer.

Ott, now 42, was convicted of the August 1995 murder of ...

Nathson E. Fields spent 18 years in prison due to a conveniently “lost” file that would have cleared him. Fields was a member of the El Rukn street gang when he was convicted of a double homicide in 1986. After a dozen years on death row and another six in general population, he was granted a retrial and cleared in 2009, then filed a wrongful conviction suit.

On April 28, 1984, at about 10:15 a.m., Talman Hickman and Jerome “Fuddy” Smith were shot to death on Chicago’s East 39th Street. Over 100 witnesses were interviewed, including a woman who described two black men with a “light complexion” fleeing the crime scene. Both wore ski masks but appeared to be in their “early 20s.” Fields had a dark complexion, was 30 years old and did not fit the description given to detectives.

Fields’ “street file” was kept by Chicago detective David O’Callaghan. Defense attorneys requested the file during Fields’ trial but prosecutors and police officers denied its existence; hiding street files was common practice in the Chicago Police Department. Years after his conviction, Fields’ file was found buried in a cabinet with cold cases dating back to 1944.

In 1985, El ...

The District of Columbia (D.C.) paid $15,000 to settle the lawsuit of prisoner George Hill for negligence and false imprisonment.

On October 15, 1999, Hill surrendered himself to the D.C. Jail, believing there was a parole violation warrant. On September 22, 1999, Parole Officer Nelex Brown, along with her supervisor, ...

Glen Edward Chapman's conviction for two Hickory, North Carolina murders was reversed and a new trial ordered because lead investigator Dennis 'Money had lied during his trial testimony and detectives had "lost, misplaced or destroyed" evidence that showed a different man had committed the murders. In 2008, the district attorney dismissed all charges against Chapman due to insufficient evidence of guilt. Despite spending 15 years on death row for crimes he did not commit, Chapman has yet to see a penny of compensation.

According to a 2009 report by the Innocence Project, Chapman shares this status with 402 of the wrongly convicted who were exonerated by DNA testing and have received no compensation for the years they spent in prison. This startling statistic is primarily due to the fact that 23 states offer no assistance to the wrongly convicted.

Even among the states that do offer compensation, technicalities might prevent or delay compensation. Such was the case with Anthony. Graves, who spent 18 years on death row in Texas. Graves was denied compensation because the judge who ordered his release failed to use the magic words "actual innocence." That he was exonerated by DNA test that proved another man had ...

Despite several recent high-profile cases where the U.S. Justice Department has urged the release of prisoners who all parties agreed were "legally innocent, dozens more remain behind bars.in North Carolina. The cases arise in instances where men were imprisoned for violation of the federal law preventing convicted felons from possessing a gun. The problem was that, according to USA Today who has investigated such cases is that" none of them had criminal records serious enough to make them felons under federal law.

Adding to the problem is the fact that the Justice Department has not made efforts to identify or notify men in these circumstances that would be entitled to release. The Justice Department avers that these prisoners must still file court pleadings to challenge these convictions and win their release.

The convictions that fall into this category stem from a law enacted decades ago that made it a crime for convicted felons to possess a gun, thereby giving prosecutors an avenue to win a longer sentence than they might have obtained without such a law. Under Congress' definition, a person who has been convicted of a crime serious enough to be sentenced to more than a year in prison ...

Viterbo Liranzo was a U.S. citizen through section 321 of the Immigration and Naturalization Act (INA), which conferred derivative citizenship on children of U.S. citizens, even though neither parent nor the child requested it. Liranzo was unaware of his citizenship, having carried his "resident alien card" or "green card" most of his life. Federal immigration records mistakenly showed him to be a lawful permanent resident.

In 2005, Liranzo was convicted of criminal sale of a controlled substance, a felony; an offense which subjected him to possible deportation. He was detained by immigration agents, which resulted in him being in custody for seven months beyond his release date. He was then transported to the Federal Detention Center in Oakdale, Louisiana, where his attorney convinced the government that he was, in fact, a U.S. citizen.

Liranzo exhausted his administrative remedies with the Department of Homeland Security and filed his complaint in U.S. District Court in New York in 2008, seeking five million dollars for "false arrest and imprisonment" and other tortious conduct. After two years of discovery, the government filed a motion alleging sovereign immunity from suit based on the limited nature of the Federal Tort Claim Act's waiver of sovereign immunity. ...

A 55-year-old man who was convicted based upon the now-discredited “science” of forensics hair analysis has been awarded $13.2 million by District of Columbia Superior Court Judge John M. Mott. This was just the latest in a long line of cases where pseudo-scientific testimony by the FBI crime lab resulted ...