List of Exonerated Death Row Inmates

This list contains names of people who were found guilty of capital crimes and placed on death row who were later found to be wrongly convicted. Some people were exonerated posthumously.

This list includes individuals who were sentenced to death and had their sentences overturned by acquittal or pardon. The state listed is the state where the individual was convicted, the year listed is the year of release, and the case listed is the case that overturned their conviction.

This list does not include

  1. posthumous pardons for individuals executed before 1950
  2. inmates who were given life sentences when their country, province or state abolished the death penalty
  3. people who were threatened with death and never jailed.
  4. people who were jailed by extralegal groups or courts, for example as often occurs in cases of sentences of stoning.

Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, death and/or row:

    A man’s interest in a single bluebird is worth more than a complete but dry list of the fauna and flora of a town.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.
    Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)

    To these, whom Death again did wed,
    This grave’s the second Marriage-bed.
    Richard Crashaw (1613?–1649)

    One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.
    Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)