Today, Kareem Johnson of Pennsylvania became the 170th person exonerated from the nation’s death rows. He is the third death row exoneration of 2020, and the sixth from Pennsylvania. According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), Johnson’s case was marked by now familiar problems: official misconduct and junk science. Read more from DPIC here: Kareem Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death in 2007 based upon evidence and argument falsely informing the jury that DNA evidence linked him to the murder. The prosecution, police, and a prosecution forensic analyst told the jury that Johnson shot the victim, Walter Smith, at such close range that Smith’s blood spattered onto a red baseball cap Johnson was wearing that was recovered at the murder scene. Philadelphia homicide prosecutor Michael Barry falsely linked Johnson to the murder through the hat, telling jurors in his opening statement that it “was left at th[e] scene in the middle of the street [and] has Kareem Johnson’s sweat on it and has Walter Smith’s blood on it.” Officer William Trenwith then testified that he had found the hat laying 8–10 feet from Smith’s body. He further testified that, in his ex

This month, Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin became the 164th person exonerated from death row in the United States and the 28th death row inmate exonerated from Florida. Aguirre-Jarquin spent over 14 years imprisoned for a crime he did not commit, and the circumstances that led to his wrongful conviction are shocking. Despite the case against him being flimsy from the beginning, the District Attorney made a shocking move after the Florida Supreme Court overturned his conviction and pursued death for a second time even though anther person had confessed to the crime. Fortunately, justice finally prevailed and the second case was thrown out when even more evidence of another person’s guilt poured in. You can read more about this shocking story here.