Recently in Exonerations Category

"I'm bitter. I'm angry," Charles Chatman, 47, told the Associated Press last night from jail. "But I'm not angry or bitter to the point where I want to hurt anyone or get revenge." He now plans to work with the Texas Innocence Project. He's the 15th person in Dallas County to be freed by DNA evidence.

The district attorney says they won't pursue a new trial against Marty Tankleff, who was recently released by a New York Appeals court. "It is no longer possible to reasonably assert that the case ... would be successful," Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota told the Associated Press.

"Chad Heins was exonerated in Florida this morning when prosecutors dropped pending charges against him for the murder of his sister-in-law, a crime he has always said he didn’t commit. New DNA evidence proves that another man committed the crime and Heins will be released this afternoon. He is the 209th person exonerated by DNA testing," says the Innocence Project.

Earlier, The Florida Times-Union says DNA bolsters Heins' innocence claim.

Lansing, Mich. authorities want the attorney general to examine a recent wrongful conviction there, that imprisoned a  man for 18 months. "Prosecutors presented little evidence linking McCollum to the crime beyond an interrogation they called a confession. And a videotape that showed he was elsewhere at the time of the crime didn't come up in trial," says the AP.

David Gray has been free for nine years after serving 20 years for a crime he didn't commit, Bernard Webster has been free for five years after also serving 20 years for a crime he didn't commit. The Innocence Project has details.

Lorraine Michaels has sued Dwayne Allen Dail, the father of her son, for back child-support for the 20 some years he was wrongly imprisoned (he was released just two months ago). The attorney who filed the suit on behalf of Michaels "works in the same law office as Don Strickland, the former Wayne County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Dail for rape," according to WRAL.

Another man confessed to the same crime that Claude McCollum has been in prison for since 2005. The Innocence Project says that he "walked out of a Lansing, Michigan, jail yesterday after prosecutors asked a judge to throw out the conviction due to new evidence in the case."

Rick Walker will receive $2.75 million to settle his wrongful conviction claim against Santa Clara County. "Walker, 51, was released from prison in 2003 after DNA tests and other new evidence cleared him of the stabbing and suffocation death of his former girlfriend Lisa Hopewell, a Cupertino resident," says Palo Alto Online.

Prosecutors in Texas have finally admitted that "the scandal-plagued Houston Police Department crime lab was responsible for sending yet another wrong person to prison," according to the Houston Chronicle. They report that Ronald Gene Taylor could be released as early as Oct. 12. (hat tip)

KOTV, in a very confusing article (they don't clearly identify the plaintiffs or all of the named defendants), says that Grisham has been sued for libel over Innocent Man -- his nonfiction account of a wrongful conviction in Oklahoma. Sheck, founder of the Innocence Project in New York, is also named, according to the article. This was Grisham's first non-fiction book. Denis Fritz's "Journey Toward Justice" is also mentioned in the article, but it's unclear if Fritz is a defendant. No documents or records in the lawsuit, supposedly filed in Federal court, are currently showing up in PACER.