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
- posthumous pardons for individuals executed before 1950
- inmates who were given life sentences when their country, province or state abolished the death penalty
- people who were threatened with death and never jailed.
- 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:
“Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship—only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpses. The death has occurred much earlier.”
—Erica Jong (b. 1942)
“Those who want to row on the ocean of human knowledge do not get far, and the storm drives those out of their course who set sail.”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)