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One of the biggest contributing factors to wrongful convictions is police tunnel vision. This occurs in a fairly high percentage of the cases that have been studied - post DNA exonerations.  It occurs when police narrow in on a suspect from the very beginning and then fail to consider other possibilities, suspects or scenarios. They ignore evidence that points away from their suspect and they proceed to shape or even manufacture evidence that supports their theory. There is no doubt in my mind that this happened in this case and one person - Jessica Adam shaped the investigation from the very beginning. Police never considered that what she was telling them may not be truthful, but we learned throughout the trial that she was untruthful about all of the state's key evidence.

"A postman who has served 17 years in prison for an attempted rape he has always denied has walked free after DNA evidence was heard at the Appeal Court. Victor Nealon, 53, was living in Redditch, Worcestershire, when he was convicted of attacking a woman in January 1997 and jailed for life. New DNA evidence revealed the presence of another man's genetic material, three Appeal Court judges were told. Mr Nealon's barrister said the evidence was "dynamite" for his client."

"W hen Gerard Richardson stood trial in Somerset County in 1995 for the brutal murder of a 19-year-old Elizabeth woman left for dead in a ditch in Bernards, a forensic dentist testified there was no question it was Richardson who left a bite mark on the woman's body. The testimony of Dr. Ira Titunik, a forensic odontologist, is largely what led to the conviction of Richardson for the February 1994 murder of Monica Reyes and a 30-year prison sentence handed down to him. But last year, analysis of DNA extracted from saliva left in the bite mark proved it wasn't Richardson at all who had bitten the victim, but someone else who has never been identified. Richardson, 49, walked out of a courtroom a free man in December after being wrongfully imprisoned for 19 years. He is the only defendant in New Jersey wrongfully convicted on bite-mark evidence to be exonerated."

Lee Finlayson, a captain with the Grand Rapids fire department, was arrested and locked up for two weeks after his girlfriend filed criminal charges against him including rape. The charges were later dropped after evidence that the text messages used as evidence against him were fake. Finlayson said he lost two weeks of his life and spent $10,000 trying to prove his innocence. As firefighters go, Captain Finlayson is considered one of the best. He was voted the 2011 Grand Rapids firefighter of the year. In September however, he was arrested stemming from a warrant out of Pennsylvania. "You are given absolutely zero information," said Finlayson. "Nobody will talk to you."

Kirk Bloodsworth, Advocacy Director of Witness to Innocence and a death row exoneree, will speak on wrongful convictions and the death penalty at an event open to the public at Fort Hays State University on April 17th at 7:00pm. Bloodsworth was accused and convicted of a horrific crime: murdering and raping a nine year-old girl. The evidence used to convict him was the testimony of five eyewitnesses. He spent eight years in prison before DNA evidence proved his innocence. Bloodsworth is one of 142 individuals in the US to be sentenced to death and later found innocent.

It was a frighteningly close call for Charles Tubbins. The 23-year-old Buffalo man was already charged with murder and indicted by a grand jury for a crime he did not commit. All that was required for a wholesale miscarriage of justice was for the plea negotiations to begin, presenting Tubbins with the horrifying options of standing trial or admitting to a crime he didn't commit in hopes of a lesser sentence. It didn't come to that because DNA evidence found at the crime scene exonerated Tubbins and implicated another man, Ahkeem R. Huffman. To his credit, Erie County District Attorney Frank A. Sedita moved quickly to dismiss the charges, but the case raises the same issues that have led to lengthy prison sentences for other innocent people in Erie County - issues of which law enforcement and the State Legislature are fully aware, but haven't seen fit to address. Tubbins was ensnared by the same human error that put Anthony Capozzi in prison for rapes he did not commit: witness misidentification. Eyewitness testimony was the only evidence against Tubbins, who, his lawyer noted, has no prior criminal convictions, no history of violence, no prior felony or misdemeanor.

A judge has dismissed a felony charge against a woman accused of falsely reporting that she was raped by a former boyfriend. Judge G. Todd Baugh has granted a defense motion to dismiss a charge of fabricating evidence filed against Christina Nadine Nelson. The judge said in an order issued Tuesday that evidence clearly showed Nelson lied when she reported the rape to police and hospital staff, but the prosecution's reliance on a report from a sexual assault examination is misplaced.

A 75-year-old yoga teacher, who was accused of raping his disciple for almost an year on the pretext of marrying her, has been acquitted by a Delhi court after the complainant retracted, saying she had filed a false complaint. Additional Sessions Judge Nivedita Anil Sharma acquitted the senior citizen, a resident of west Delhi while observing that the victim had turned hostile and deposed that the accused had never established physical relations with her or promised marriage. "The prosecutrix (girl), has not deposed an iota of evidence of her being raped at all. She has not even mentioned the word 'rape' or any other offence in her evidence nor has deposed anything incriminating against the accused," the court said. The girl deposed in the court that she implicated the man at the behest of another woman named Reena, the whereabouts of who were not known to the police.

Fran Keller was sentenced to 48 years in prison for allegedly sexually abusing a 3-year-old girl, Christy Chaviers, who in 1991 was an infrequent drop-in at the home-based daycare Fran and her husband Dan Keller ran out of their Oak Hill home. (Dan was also convicted and sentenced to 48 years. The current appeal has been filed on Fran's behalf, but will impact Dan's conviction as well.) After a day in care at the Kellers' home that summer Chrsity told her mother, Suzanne Stratton, that Dan Keller spanked her. That allegation quickly morphed into an allegation of sexual abuse - and then again, into wilder allegations of abuse perpetrated by the middle-aged couple on Chaviers and two other children who were also drop-in clients and whose parents were friendly with Stratton. By the fall, the allegations turned fantastical: The Kellers had taken the kids on plane rides to Mexico, subjected them to satanic bone-replacing rituals, killed animals and babies - allegations that led Christy's therapist, then Donna David Campbell, to conclude Christy had been a victim of "ritual abuse."

Texas resident Steven Phillips has had a rough 30 years. In 2009, after 24 years in prison, Phillips was declared innocent of the sexual assault charges that landed him behind bars. DNA evidence showed that sexual offender Sydney Alvin Goodyear, not Phillips, had committed the offenses he was in prison for. His time in jail wrecked much of his life. Phillips spent almost three decades locked up, waiting to for the world to believe his claim of innocence. He and his wife divorced in 1992, 10 years after his sentence began. Phillips missed out on raising his child that was due the same year he was incarcerated.

This week's feature tells the story of John Kinsel, a man who will spend the rest of his life locked up at Angola Prison for a crime his accuser has since said he didn't commit. Alyssa Medlin testified as a nine-year-old that Kinsel -- her mother's boyfriend -- had raped her for years. The girl's family didn't believe Medlin, a child with a history of lying. One of her friends had compelling evidence that Medlin had made it all up. But this story wasn't told during the shoddy investigation, and Kinsel was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

A Surrey man served four years in jail for a sex assault he may not have committed due to what the criminal justice branch is calling "a miscarriage of justice." Gurdev Singh Dhillon was alleged to have sexually assaulted a woman in 2004 and was sentenced to four years in jail in 2005. Appeals to both sentence and conviction were dismissed in 2006. However, in 2011, Crown counsel learned of the existence of material evidence that had not been disclosed by police.

Only 10 On Your Side questioned Hampton's top cop about evidence that put an innocent man behind bars. Commonwealth's Attorney Anton Bell did not hold the office when a jury convicted Johnathon Montgomery of sexual assault, but explained the case in an exclusive interview with WAVY.com Wednesday. Elizabeth Coast originally testified Montgomery raped her when she was 10 years old and he was 14, but later admitted she made up the story. Montgomery spent four years in prison before Coast's confession.

After two-and-a-half hours of deliberation, a jury of seven women and five men found Jordan Johnson not guilty of rape. Johnson broke into tears as his attorneys, David Paoli and Kirsten Pabst buried him in a group hug. Upon hearing the verdict, Johnson's mother said, "Thank God," and burst into sobs. His father cheered in celebration. Others in the courtroom cheered and a few Griz football players' eyes filled with tears. The woman was not present in the courtroom. The case was a classic "he-said, she-said." Expert witnesses on both sides deemed the limited physical evidence inconclusive.

In 1984, when I was just 21, I was convicted of a rape I did not commit. DNA evidence would subsequently prove my innocence, but not before I spent a decade behind bars. Nothing is more horrifying than prison life when you know you shouldn't be there. You lose more than just your freedom; you lose your very identity. The experience of being wrongfully convicted is truly unusual. Only others who have spent time in prison for a crime they didn't commit can fully appreciate the nightmare.

A city woman was arrested Thursday for falsely reporting a rape after her husband discovered evidence of an extramarital affair, and her lover was arrested for roughing her up, police said. Greybi Vasquez, 38, of 115 Ely Ave., was charged with making a false statement. She posted $1,000 bond. Gerardo Aguilar-Aparicio, 23, also of 115 Ely Ave., was charged with unlawful restraint and third-degree assault. He posted $10,000 bond.

A Michigan woman who appealed for money to fight her cancer was charged Monday with fraud, just a few days after she was accused in another case of falsely reporting a rape and using makeup to show injuries. Besides two criminal cases filed against Sara Ylen in less than a week, she also was involved in the prosecution of James Grissom, who was released from prison last fall after nearly 10 years. Despite no physical evidence, Grissom was found guilty of raping Ylen in 2001 in a parking lot. A judge threw out the conviction after authorities learned she had made up sexual-assault allegations in California, information that wasn't available to the defense at trial.

HAVANA - A Pekin woman faces a felony charge of disorderly conduct for accusing a Mason County sheriff's deputy of raping her in his squad car - a claim she still defends, although state police say evidence they collected does not support her story. Sha

Investigators will lie, grill for hours on end and withhold exonerating evidence - in effect do anything - to extract a confession from a suspect they have pegged for a crime, a 1994 parolee seeking a retrial to clear his name in the 1963 kidnap-murder of a Saitama Prefecture girl said Thursday in Tokyo. Speaking at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, Kazuo Ishikawa, who appeared with his lawyer, Taketoshi Nakayama, pointed to discrepancies in the kanji used in an apparent ransom demand for ¥200,000 and an earlier document he wrote and also alleged that the state looked to him as a usual suspect because of his roots in Japan's former outcast class known as the "burakumin." He continues to claim he is innocent.

KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) - A Jackson County judge has ordered the release of a man wrongfully convicted of rape and robbery in 1984. In a news release issued Friday afternoon, the Midwest Innocence Project said the release occurred on Wednesday. DNA evidence exonerated Robert Nelson, who did not appear at a news conference Friday. He was picked up earlier this week by his sister and her family. "The flaws in our justice system can only be corrected by those who seek the truth," said Laura O'Sullivan, legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project. "Thankfully, the Jackson County prosecutors were interested in seeking the truth. Their cooperation led to Robert Nelson's release and identification of the true perpetrators in this crime. But that is the only silver lining to the tragedy that Robert endured: convicted of a crime he did not commit."