A record number of individuals who were convicted of crimes were deemed innocent in 2013, according to a report by the National Registry of Exonerations. Twenty-seven of the 87 known exonerations were in cases in which no crime actually occurred, almost half for non-violent crimes, primarily drugs.
Murder and even death penalty cases continue to be over-represented in these exonerations. Among those who were deemed not guilty was David Ranta, who, a re-investigation uncovered 22 years after he was convicted of murder, was convicted based on witnesses who were bribed and pressured to testify against him in the quest to find a culprit for the high-profile killing of a rabbi.
But in addition to these botched murder cases, this year’s list also includes several whose convictions of lesser crimes were invalidated based on discovered photos and recordings of the incidents. Two highlighted by the report involved alleged violence against police, that, recordings later showed, revealed that the violence went the other way around.
Malcolm Emory was convicted of felony assault for allegedly throwing a brick at police during a Vietman war protest. Emory was a 19-year-old student at Northeastern University at the time, studying physics on a full scholarship from the Navy. Police claimed they beat him after he threw a brick, but Emory always maintained that he was carrying books. An unpublished newspaper photo discovered 20 years later depicted him “being dragged across the ground by a police officer while holding an armful of books.”
As a result of the felony conviction, Emory lost his scholarship and was unable to complete college, was “forced to resign from his job at the United States Naval Underwater Sound Laboratory and was stripped of his security clearance.” Even after Emory learned years later that a Boston Globe photographer had a set of unpublished photos from that day, it took his lawyers four years to secure access to the images without a subpoena. The day after the charges against Emory were dismissed, Northeastern granted him his scholarship and he completed his bachelor’s degree in physics.
A Tennessee exoneration tells a similar story. Adam Tatum was convicted of assault on a police officer and possession of marijuana and sentenced to two years in prison. Because this incident was from 2012 when video monitoring had become common, Tatum was exonerated just a year later using security video footage that police never disclosed.
Tatum was in a re-entry facility for convicted felons when two officers approached Tatum and a fellow resident. When the men started to walk away, officers severely beat Tatum.
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