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In 1982, Dennis Fritz and Ron Williamson were convicted of a brutal rape and murder in a small town in Oklahoma. The victim was 21-year-old Debra Sue Carter, a waitress at the Coachlight Club. Williamson and Fritz each spent more than 11 years in prison for a crime that DNA evidence later proved they did not commit. Before he went to prison, Fritz was raising his then-12-year-old daughter Elizabeth, alone. He decided she shouldn't visit him in prison, because he sensed she was scared. But, Fritz says, he knew his daughter loved him, and believed in his innocence. Elizabeth was 24 when Fritz got out, and he remembers the moment they saw each other in the visiting room of the county jail, where he'd been transferred prior to his release.

A Missouri man who spent three decades in prison for rape he didn't commit is now a free man. 49 year old Robert Nelson was convicted in 1984 of rape, sodomy and robbery. He was identified by the rape victim as one of the men involved in the crime. But after the Midwest Innocence Project got involved, Nelson's DNA was tested and showed that he was not the perpetrator.

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.

Serving a lengthy prison sentence for a rape he didn't commit, Robert E. Nelson asked for DNA testing to prove his innocence. Twice since 2009, he was turned down. In late 2011, Jackson County prosecutors working through cold cases sought testing for a very different reason: to find Nelson's accomplice. A few months later, as prosecutors were nearly finished with their testing, a judge approved Nelson's newest request.

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.

The 9,389 days Anthony Caravella wrongfully spent in prison still haunt him, but he was relieved Tuesday that two former police officers who put him away are finally being held accountable. Jurors decided that William Mantesta and George Pierson framed Caravella, then a mentally challenged 15 year old, for the 1983 rape and murder of a Miramar woman and should pay him $7 million for the close to 26 years he spent in prison.

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.

HAMPTON - A woman who falsely accused a Hampton man of sex crimes pleaded guilty Tuesday morning. Elizabeth Coast faces up to 10 years in prison for perjury when she's sentenced on August 19. During her the trial in June 2008, she said Johnathon Montgomery forced her to perform oral sex. He was convicted and sent to prison. He was released just before Thanksgiving 2012 after more than four years behind bars after Coast admitted she lied to avoid scrutiny by her parents after she was caught looking for sexually explicit websites. Governor Bob McDonnell issued a conditional pardon for Montgomery and ordered his immediate release. The prosecution said Coast confessed to a police officer friend that she lied and added the she and Montgomery had never done anything.

When Melinda Denham lied about being raped, it resulted in two people being placed behind bars. First, the man she accused, [name withheld], was jailed for two months last year before Denham admitted she lied. On Wednesday, a judge threw Denham into prison for six months, a rarity on a conviction for Ohio's lowest-level felony, which usually results in probation. "What you did in this case is, you caused a man to be incarcerated and he had done nothing and the worst part about that was you knew from the very start that he had done nothing," Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Steve Martin told Denham. "What you did was terrible beyond any words."

A WOMAN who sparked a major investigation after claiming she was raped as she walked home from a night out has been spared prison. Kirstie Hodgson was told by a Teesside Crown Court judge he would neither punish nor penalise her after hearing of her fragile mental state. The costly police probe was launched after Hodgson claimed she had been raped in Middlesbrough in the early hours of October 19, last year. She said the attacker told her he had a knife and stole her mobile telephone, and went on to point out the location of the alleged incident.

SAN DIEGO - Even though he spent the past eight years in prison, wrongly convicted of kidnapping and raping a teenager in Lemon Grove, Uriah Courtney is considered among the lucky ones. Lucky, because his case caught the attention of the California Innocence Project. Lucky, because evidence in the sexual assault still existed to be retested for DNA. And lucky, because he is one of the few to actually have his conviction overturned, said California Western School of Law professor Justin Brooks, who oversees the Innocence Project. Courtney, 33, was released from Donovan State Prison on May 6 after new tests showed DNA from the victim's clothing matched another felon who lived in the area of the attack.

Original Article01/13/2014By ART GOLAB A man who spent 25 years behind bars for a rape he did not commit is the latest wrongfully convicted ex-prisoner to collect a multimillion settlement from the City of Chicago. The City Council Finance Commi...

A former Chicago Police sergeant whose rape conviction was overturned in 2011 has filed a lawsuit against the woman who accused him. John Herman filed the suit in Cook County Circuit Court Friday, claiming that the woman falsely accused him to get money from the city. The woman had sued the city in federal court and received a $1.5 million dollar legal settlement, the Sun-Times reported at the time of the 2011 Illinois Appellate Court decision that overturned Herman's conviction. According to the suit, Herman had consensual sex with the woman in her apartment on March 9, 2004. She later accused Herman of kidnapping her, driving to her apartment and forcing her to have sex with him at gunpoint, the Sun-Times reported. Herman is claiming that the woman's accusations and the resulting prosecution caused him to lose his job, damaged his reputation and caused him to serve four years in prison. Herman was convicted of rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison, but the Illinois Appellate Court overturned the conviction on October 2, 2011, according to the suit. The three-count suit charges the woman with malicious prosecution, abuse of process and defamation and asks for more than $100,000 in damages.

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.

Citing procedural roadblocks in federal law, a federal appeals court panel has ruled it can have no say on whether a man serving life in prison for raping a girl in Jefferson Parish should get a new trial since the victim recanted her claims that the man sexually abused her in the 1990s.

A Chicago man who spent 20 years in prison is freed after a new investigation reveals he had an alibi. Daniel Taylor was in police custody at the time and Saturday night he spoke out. Taylor was 17 years old when he says police coerced him into confessing. Taylor's exoneration is the 90th in Cook County since 1989. He is the 34th known to have been wrongfully convicted based on a unreliable confession.

Original Article06/17/2013By Lisa BensonKSHB - A Missouri man who spent three decades in prison for rape he didn't commit is now a free man. 49 year old [name withheld] convicted in 1984 of rape, sodomy and robbery. He was identified by the rape...

FORT WORTH - When Ruby Cole Session met with Gov. Rick Perry in April 2009, some people told her it was a waste of time. Her son Tim Cole had been wrongly convicted of sexual assault and died in prison, and there were those who said Perry wouldn't be sympathetic to her cause. But after that first encounter, Mrs. Session was confident that Perry would sign the Tim Cole Act, which compensates wrongly convicted people and also created the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions, which was designed to help reverse other wrongful imprisonments. "My mother said: 'No, no, no. I felt his heart. He'll sign it'," said her son Cory Session of Fort Worth. Mrs. Session died Thursday at her home in Fort Worth of an aneurysm, Cory Session said. Her 77th birthday was Sunday.

Original Article10/10/2013 A teenager has spoken of his nine-month hell in jail awaiting trial after being accused of rape and kidnap. _____ was freed on Tuesday after being cleared by a jury of tying a 16-year-old girl to his bed and attacking ...

A South Africa man will leave jail on Wednesday after having spent 10 years behind bars because his daughter falsely accused him of rape. Cedric Shezi was arrested soon after his daughter, Pinky Dube, accused him of the horrible crime and he received a life sentence after being convicted of two counts of rape in 2005. Dube will be waiting to see him when he is released.