(somber music) - I didn't talk about my innocence, especially in the beginning.

I was too busy trying to stay alive.

- If you're innocent and new evidence comes out that indicates you're innocent, you're gonna walk outta prison right away.

But not in the state of Missouri and not in a lot of places.

- When we put the wrong person in prison for a crime they didn't commit, the real person is still available to go free and commit other crimes.

- We know what it's like to be lonely.

We know what it's like to feel invisible.

We know what it's like to cry for decades sometimes and not get an echo of a response back.

- Notice how many of these exonerations that the Midwest Innocence Project and the Innocence Project are involved in are people that have been in for 10, 20, 30, 40 years in prison.

And you know, we're in a race against time to find them.

- I have never seen hope.

Just like I never seen justice.

- I'm living the life I spent 36 years dreaming about.

(somber music) (somber music continues) I remember when Midwest Innocence Project consisted of one full-time employee.

Tricia Bushnell.

- I was offered a position here at the Midwest Innocence Project as the first Legal Director to be hired by the Board of Directors.

And you know, like I said, there's not a lot of funding and there's not a lot of places to do this work.

And when I received that opportunity, I jumped at the chance, especially because this is a region that I think has been largely overlooked.

- She's always been in the world, the innocence world as we call it, right?

You know, first as somebody that was teaching and working in an Innocence project and is, you know, forming the Midwest Innocence Project as an independent nonprofit.

- Trish Bushnell practices law that you don't learn in law school.

She is a great lawyer, to start off with.

Appellate lawyer, to start off with.

She's a diplomat, because she has to deal with prosecutor's office and private attorneys and individuals who are frustrated and impatient about spending too much time in prison.

She has to raise money, because there's no money for these individuals who are wrongfully convicted.

- She had nothing.

And built and built and built and worked and worked.

She built MIP to what it is today.

- Rodney Lincoln was convicted of a horrific murder of a mother and an assault on her two young children in 1982.

So this took place in St. Louis city in the early morning hours.

The mother was murdered.

Her two daughters, who were four and seven years old, were injured.

The 4-year-old had had her throat slit open and when their uncle came and found them the next morning, he said, "Who did this to you?"

And the 7-year-old, who was still able to speak, said, "Bill."

And so at the time the investigators start looking, the little girls go to the hospital.

That 7-year-old, her name was Melissa, is in the hospital for months, getting surgeries after surgeries 'cause her body had been cut open very severely.

- A traumatized, injured eight-year-old girl that went through that experience that no one should ever have to go through.

- While she's in the hospital, They're showing her all of these photos of men named Bill, William, Billy, and she can't make any identification.

So at some point she says, well, this person kind of looked like someone else that she was related to.

And so they made a composite sketch based on that person and not the suspect of the crime.

Looking at that composite sketch, the victim's family members, her brother said, "Well, that kind of looks like a man that we had set her up on with a date."

And so they go through, the police start going through her diary and they find the name of Rodney Lincoln.

- One third of the time, eyewitnesses will pick what are known as fillers in photo arrays or lineups.

So they're wrong a third of the time.

This is archival studies, and even studies where you try to figure out different ways of doing eyewitness procedures.

So we always knew that this was a leading cause of wrongful convictions, because the act of eyewitnesses identifying people is inherently problematic.

- Faye Jacobs was convicted of capital murder for a murder that happened in 1992, when she was just 16 years old.

So this crime, which took place in Little Rock, Arkansas involved two teenagers walking down a street when a car drove up to rob them of their starter jackets.

Right, back in the 90s.

The teens handed over their jackets.

But as they did it, one of them reached for his comb and the individual who got out the car shot him.

Witnesses described the individual who got out of the car as a African-American woman in her 30s with red hair under a black cap, wearing all black and pockmarks under her eyes.

And some people said that she was also with a man that was there.

Faye Jacobs was not 30 years old, she was just 16.

And she was at church all day with her friends in her white church dress.

And when they arrested her and picked her up later that day, she was still in her white church dress with her hair up in a top knot, no pockmarks under her eyes.

- I believed in the system and it wasn't until I got in the system that I stopped believing in the system, that the system was actually rigged, that these people are a joke.

They don't care about innocence, they don't care about truth, they don't care about honesty.

You know, they just care about taking a case and say it is closed.

We got a conviction, and that's it.

And that's something that I later learned while, you know, in jail and then further incarcerated.

- But she gets convicted because one, of a bad lineup procedure that happened with the remaining witness who does not identify her originally, but after he's brought over and over to look at these same pictures is said, told by a police officer, "Well, it seems like your hand is hovering over this number.

Are you afraid of that person," right?

And he ultimately goes on to identify Faye.

- It's very disappointing to see how often that there is either a rush to judgment, sometimes unintentional, there are blinders.

And that confirmation bias, a police officer is so sure that his gut is correct about the person that he's arrested, that he won't look at evidence that points to somebody else.

We see it all the time.

- Chris Dunn was convicted of the murder of Recco Rogers, which took place in 1990.

He was convicted in 1991.

This was a crime that occurred again in the evening hours.

There were some very young kids sitting on the porch with Recco when someone came by, came up from behind the house and shot and killed him.

Essentially, no one could see anything from the position that they were in.

It was dark, someone was coming from behind.

You just saw the flashes and muzzles of light.

But Chris had recently come home and folks had sort of known his name.

And so in the end, these children are pressured to identify Chris Dunn.

So now with him as a suspect, having made that identification, they go, now go back to this 7-year-old girl.

And this time they show her just two pictures, one of her sister's half-brother and one of Rodney Lincoln.

With that identification, they charge Rodney, he has a first trial, they present his alibi defense, and the testimony from Melissa and the jury couldn't reach a verdict.

So this time now they go to a second trial.

At the second trial, they this time bring forward a hair that they found on a blanket at the crime scene that they say matched Rodney Lincoln.

And this is using what's called microscopic hair comparison, where you take a hair found at the crime scene, compare it to a hair in someone's head, and you look at it through a microscope and they used to say, it matches.

We now know you cannot do that.

That is not actually science.

The Department of Justice and FBI have done a review of the federal cases and found a 92% error rate in the testimony of forensic analysts looking at hair comparison.

But now they have the, you know, identification from Melissa.

- Gave a very damaging report.

She said that I was the one that did this.

At the end of her testimony, they had her come down from the stand, walk across the courtroom in front of me, point a finger at me and say, "That's the man that did this."

It was sensationalism, and it worked.

- Fast forward into the 2015/2016 timeframe.

Midwest Innocence Project is representing Rodney.

Actually earlier than that, we had worked with him to get DNA testing.

So we went and spoke to the prosecutors and they agreed, we did DNA testing of that hair that was found on the blanket and also DNA on a hair that was found on the person of the 4-year-old, right?

That shouldn't have had someone else's hair on her.

Neither of those hairs matched Rodney Lincoln.

He was excluded, but the court at the time said it doesn't matter.

Melissa had quote, "never wavered in her identification."

And so her conviction still stood.

And now Melissa, now a 40-year-old woman, comes forward and recants her identification.

- 30 years later, she's asked to watch a program that did a story on my case.

She called my daughter, Kay.

She told my daughter, "I'm sorry.

I was wrong.

Your dad didn't do this."

- He wasn't in my house that night.

He was not there, he was never there.

And I would be willing to take a lie detector, whatever you want.

But he was not in the house.

He did not kill my mom.

- So then with that recantation and now this DNA evidence, we go back into court and we say, "Hey, there's no evidence that you could use to convict Mr.

Lincoln."

But unfortunately the Missouri Court of Appeals said that Mr. Lincoln mistakenly presumes that his innocence is enough.

Because now in Missouri, innocence is only enough to get you outta prison if you were sentenced to death.

And Rodney Lincoln was not sentenced to death.

So we lost.

- It is ludicrous to say, "Well, we can't let you go because you're not sentenced the right way."

I wasn't tried the right way, they didn't change that.

What does a sentence that a person has have to do with the fact that that person is innocent?

- The second person who IDs Faye is another witness who was in the area, but he was facing his own charges at the time and he was facing his own murder charges.

And his co-defendant was a woman who was in the same cell in the jail as Faye.

And that witness was represented by Faye's defense attorney as well.

So that defense attorney comes to Faye and says, "Hey, if you will say that your jailhouse cellmate says she did the crime by herself, this witness won't testify against you."

Well, that's wrong, for a lot of reasons, and it's lying, and Faye wouldn't do it.

And so Faye, just 16 years old, filed a motion to get a new attorney and she did get a new attorney.

Unfortunately, that attorney didn't do all of the things that we would do, which is investigate the case and see what was really there.

What we were able to identify is, you know, there were actually seven witnesses who were there at the scene, who saw what happened, and many of whom knew Faye and said definitively it was not Faye who committed that crime.

And there were also alternative suspects that we were able to develop who had been seen riding around that day, doing these kinds of crimes.

- I remember being charged and being in jail, awaiting trial for a while, for a year.

And when I went to trial, I seen my lawyer a day before my trial.

So mind you, I had sat in jail a year without seeing my lawyer before I went to trial, and I was actually charged with capital felony murder.

So you would think that my lawyer would be visiting me and you know, preparing me for this upcoming trial, which that did not occur.

- The charges I had involved child molestation.

A woman was killed.

And now they talk about people in prison, all the bad things.

Some of those bad things are true.

And one of them is they don't like people who kill women and they don't like child molesters.

And if they don't like something, they want it eliminated.

It took me 10 years before I could feel like I was accepted, that I didn't have to look around every corner.

Because I didn't talk about my innocence, especially in the beginning.

I was too busy trying to stay alive.

- I was assigned a public defender from the city of St. Louis, but I can tell you this much, she was no more different than the average attorney who's assigned to represent you, which she did not care.

To her, I was a throwaway case, I was a stepping stone.

I was away up the ladder for her.

So it took this woman nine months from the time that she was initially assigned to my case to finally come see me.

Nine months.

Only because I came to see her.

No more than three to five minutes.

This is how long we prepared for my case.

Court started on a Monday.

My attorney chose not to come that Monday.

So when it comes to this, we're either forced to either listen to the law clerks or your attorneys.

When does ineffective assistance of counsel come into play?

- The two children, now adults come and they recant their identification.

And at this time, Chris then takes this evidence to the court, "There's nothing left to convict me.

You had two individuals who said I committed this crime, they both recanted.

And now also there was another individual, another witness, Eugene Wilson, who came forward and said, 'I was there.

Chris was not there.'"

In 2020, a judge credited all of that testimony, found that those recantations were reliable and that Eugene Wilson was reliable and said that no juror would ever convict Chris Dunn based on this evidence.

But said, because Chris had not been sentenced to death, they could not release him.

- When he stated that with the evidence presented before this court today, there is no jury that could find Christopher Dunn guilty of this crime.

And it is apparent that Christopher Dunn was convicted based on the testimony of liars.

And the court see that Christopher Dunn has met the freestanding claim of actual innocence, as well as the gateway standard of actual innocence.

However, due to Lincoln v. Cassidy, I'm unable to free Christopher Dunn until a higher court in our judicial process come forward and does something to change this, that Mr. Dunn would have to remain in the Department of Correction."

That felt like somebody took a baseball bat and just beat my body up with it.

I wasn't going to die immediately from it, but I was going to feel that pain blow by blow.

Each word was like a swing from that bat impacted on my body.

- And it took another four years until a prosecutor came along and reviewed the case that he was finally able to get free.

- When you were incarcerated, that's something you can't talk about, because everybody is viewed as guilty.

There's no one there innocent.

And so when you go in, you can't go in saying, "I'm innocent," but me being young, I didn't know that.

I just knew I was innocent and I wanted everybody to know and if you can help me, you know, prove this, please do.

That was just my goal when I went in.

And so when I recall going in, once you enter the prison system, each inmate is assigned a counselor.

And I remember being assigned my counselor and she said, "What's your story?"

I said, "I don't have a story.

I'm innocent."

And she threw her book down, she's like, "Oh, you're one of those.

Here we go.

Everybody's innocent."

And she was like, "No, you've been found guilty.

You're guilty.

And you can just face the reality that you will never get outta here.

You have life without parole.

Your only freedom is dying and leaving out in a cardboard box."

And so when I did go on the compound after my intake status, you know, girls were like, you know, "We saw you on TV, you know, your case was a high profile case."

And I said, "Yes, but I'm innocent," you know, and when I said that, girls were like, "You don't need to say that.

You'll get hurt saying that."

I was like, "Why?

But I'm innocent."

And they were absolutely right, because it put a target on me.

So I suffered a lot.

My first five years, and mind you, I had life without parole.

And it wasn't 'til like maybe after five years of my state, other lifers were like, "She's gonna be here for the rest of her life.

Whether she accepts her fate or not, we need to take her upon our wings."

And that's what they did.

And that's when things began to mellow out, you know, for the people trying to harm me.

But it didn't stop the staff members, from targeting me as well, because I always mentioned my innocence.

- For years, I thought I got convicted.

I wrote almost everyone you could possibly think of.

Organizations, Black churches, white churches, Catholic, you name it.

I wrote temples, (indistinct) you name them.

Synagogues, you name them, I written them.

No one responded.

And even those later on somewhere, around about 1995 started to respond.

And there are things where that you have a unique case.

Unfortunately, we are underfunded, we're unable to take your case or because of the distance, because your case is a Missouri case and we're in Nebraska or some other state, we can't.

Life without parole, plus an additional 90 years means you will die in prison.

That has to be one of the worst lives that anyone can ever live.

You're no longer living, you're just existing.

You're waiting to die.

For someone like myself who's actually innocent, the pain of the thought of it is torture.

- First time Tricia came to visit me, she gave me a hug.

I didn't really know how to accept that.

Here I am, a person convicted of capital murder and two first degree assault on children, and she's hugging me.

A lot of times, she'd bring law students with her.

And she'd always give me a hug.

And some of the law students would give me a hug.

They made me feel like I was worth fighting for.

But not only that, they also made me part of the team.

- The reason why I first really started doing stories that involved the Midwest Citizens Project was the idea that here were all these cases where there was so much evidence that these individuals sitting in prison were innocent.

The prosecutor believed that those individuals were innocent or at the very minimum did not get fair trial.

You had the Midwest Innocence Project convinced that you had these individuals who were innocent and yet they remained in prison.

That seemed inconceivable.

- The Midwest Innocence Project is dedicated to investigating and litigating wrongful conviction cases in the five state region, which includes Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Iowa.

And we do that through comprehensive legal services from investigation all the way through litigation, as well as social work services, both pre and post-release.

- When most folks hear the term Innocence Project, they think of the Innocence Project, which was started in the '90s at Cardozo School of Law, and is based in New York.

That Innocence Project does cases all around the country that involve DNA, you have to have the ability to do DNA testing.

But what most people don't know is that actually every innocence organization around the country is independent.

So we're independently funded and we're independently run.

So for example, while the Innocence Project in New York does cases that involve DNA, at the Midwest Innocence Project, we do cases whether or not they involve DNA or not.

In terms of the work to support our mission, the organization's really divided into sort of three areas.

The first is our legal work, which is what most people think about, right?

Our direct representation of individuals who are wrongfully convicted.

That includes everything from the investigators and paralegals working in our office, the intake, getting all of the applications, reviewing the applications, investigating, getting experts, and then actually litigating, all of that is handled by the legal department.

Another avenue is the social work department.

- We focus on kind of two main avenues.

We do a lot of therapeutic support for our clients who are currently incarcerated, as well as post-release support.

And that's kind of looking at like your case management part of it, making home plans, housing, employment, insurance, all the kind of things that it takes to be an adult in everyday life.

And we start that process, the coming home process while they're still incarcerated.

- The Midwest Innocence Project is fortunate to have two investigators full-time on staff, which really increases our capacity to work cases.

That allows us to have investigators staffed to case teams from the very origin of those cases.

When we decide to work on those cases, that means the investigators are true knowers of the facts of the case.

They know the record back to front and they can participate with the whole legal team to, you know, ask those investigative questions early on, figure out what records are missing, figure out what witnesses need to be talked to, so that the whole team can prepare an investigative plan.

And then it's the investigator's role to execute on that plan.

And sometimes that looks like further case analysis and research, but often what it looks like is going out and knocking on doors and talking to people.

That's a huge part of the investigative function.

- People think innocence projects are departments of the government, they're not.

They're really just defense attorneys.

Defense attorneys that are completely focused on wrongful convictions.

So they don't have any greater power than a defense attorney.

- On June 1st, 2018, Eric Wright's last day in office, he commuted Rodney Lincoln's sentence to time served and released him, based on the fact that he was wrongfully convicted.

- When they finally let it go, I remember..

Walked out the door, looking up.

The sun felt so different from outside than did on the inside.

- We were prepared to do and present all of that evidence in an innocence petition, we'd filed it in federal court, but at that same time, Faye's sentence was reduced to time served on the basis of the fact that she had been a child when she was convicted.

And so our ability to pursue her innocence claim went away.

- I made a decision to be resentenced to time served, to come home.

I have difficulties because of my conviction on my record, because I'm not yet exonerated.

And so I have challenges that I have to face with jobs, housing, adoption.

The list just goes on.

- When I tell someone I served 36 years on wrongful conviction, most (indistinct).

"Really?

Wow.

Wrongful conviction?"

"Yeah."

"Well, did they pay you?"

No, they can't pay me because I haven't been exonerated.

I'm just free.

The governor commuted my sentence to time served.

In other words, I served my time.

I didn't serve my guilt.

- In order to get back into court, in order to challenge someone's conviction, they still have to be what's called in the custody of the state.

So they either have to still be incarcerated or they have to be on probation or parole.

And so for people like Rodney, where his sentence is finished, right, but he's still not exonerated, the ability for him to ever be exonerated is either that another governor would have to ultimately pardon him, overturn that, or we would have to change the law to allow someone to be able to bring this claim.

- I'm living the life I spent 36 years dreaming about.

Now I can dream about something better.

- That is as serious as losing faith in the criminal justice is the idea that if you put the wrong person away, the actual killer can commit more acts and often does.

- Also troubling in Kris's case, when we wanna talk about how hard the Attorney General's fight is when the judge came down and ruled that Chris Dunn was innocent, the Attorney General directed the prison not to release him.

And we had to fight and sue and get back in court and go up and down and he lost another nine days of his life because of that.

Even though a court had already found he was innocent twice.

- You hear people say that they're innocent.

You hear people say that they was railroaded or wronged, but it's difficult to accept it when you see it in black and white in your face.

But the question is not if it's that difficult for you to accept it, but what are you willing to do after you see this wrong?

- You ruin lives.

I look at someone like Christopher Dunn who went in when he was 18, 19 years of age.

He had wanted to be a history professor.

I think he would've been a history professor.

So you destroy his life, you destroy the defendant's life.

But yes, the family is totally changed because of having a family member go in prison.

And wrongfully.

- I have never seen hope.

Just like I never seen justice.

And if you put hope and justice in a line up and asked me to identify both of them, hope and justice will go free, because I could not identify them to save my life.

- Sadly, Christopher Dunn, who should never have been charged, convicted, or spent that much time in prison, it was that easy to convict him and yet then to get him out, it took the Midwest Innocence Project, it took private lawyers, it took a prosecutor willing to take a chance and take a new look at his case.

It took a village.

That's ridiculous.

- There are times when we are prevented from stopping an injustice.

But there should never be a time when we fail to protest it.

- Marcellus Williams was convicted of the murder of a woman named Felicia Gale, who had been found murdered in her home.

She had been stabbed dozens of times and you know, there it was a bloody crime scene, but there were no leads.

Marcellus ultimately gets convicted years later after incentivized informants come forward and say that he confessed to them.

So when there were no leads, the victim's husband offered a $10,000 reward.

At that point, a jailhouse informant, someone who was incarcerated with him, came forward and said, "Oh yeah, I would like that reward.

And here are my notes about what he has said to me that he did."

The information he provided was all information that you could have already received from the news, from police reports, and yet that's what the state moved forward with.

None of the forensic evidence from the crime scene matched Marcellus.

There were hairs found there, fingerprints, footprints, bloody footprints, none of which connected him to the crime scene.

Instead, he was convicted solely based upon this incentivized informant testimony.

Marcellus had several execution dates that were scheduled and then they would either be stayed or new ones set.

The first one that was set in 2015 was stayed when the court granted the right to get the DNA testing on that murder weapon of the knife.

- This knife was handled rigorously, it was rubbed, and friction is what transfers DNA.

- [Anchor] Greg Hampikian tested the DNA in this case.

- Whoever handled this knife likely left DNA, it is not Marcellus Williams.

- So they stayed that execution, they started to went and got the DNA testing.

Once that testing was done, the judge who was overseeing the testing didn't examine what the results meant.

He just sent the results back up to the Missouri Supreme Court who affirmed the conviction and they set a new date, which was the 2017 date.

- Marcellus Williams was about to be executed when, you know, the Innocence Project and Midwest Innocence Project joined together because we were able to get DNA testing on very probative evidence that showed that Marcellus was excluded and did not commit the crime.

- We first came onto his case in 2017.

At that time, Marcellus had been scheduled for an execution date and we started advocating not as his council, but as other community members that there should be a stay of execution and a board of inquiry, which is a special procedure where a board comes in and reviews the case, should be appointed, based upon new DNA test results that had come forward in his case.

- At the very last minute, you know, both organizations, you know, began a campaign as quickly and as well as we could to make sure that an innocent person wasn't executed.

And that campaign eventually led to Governor Greitens agreeing to stay the execution and form what's known as a court of inquiry in the state of Missouri, which had been started years ago.

You know, to deal with situations where people are about to be executed, but maybe the courts had not done enough.

So court of inquiry is a group of judges that are selected and they will do a deep dive into the evidence.

- Fast forward six years later, in June of 2023, Governor Mike Parson dissolved that board of inquiry before it, we believe had finished its work, essentially saying it's taking too long.

And that is what set the path forward again to set a new execution date for him.

Based upon the new DNA test results, the prosecutor had filed a motion to overturn Marcellus's conviction on the basis of his innocence and on the basis of other constitutional errors that occurred at his trial, including racial discrimination.

On the eve of the hearing we were supposed to have, on that motion, new DNA test results came forward, showing that actually the DNA on the knife was consistent with the prosecutor at the time of trial and his investigator, meaning they had contaminated the evidence, they had touched it instead of, essentially destroying what was there from the murder before, - Which is inexcusable to put your DNA all over the murder weapon.

And, but there was still other evidence that, besides the DNA exclusion that raised serious questions about whether Marcellus committed this crime.

And, you know, total unreliable jailhouse informant testimony.

And what eventually occurred is that we had this hearing and you know, we had this, as you call it, an Alfred plea.

- Which means saying, "I recognize there's evidence that could be used to convict me.

I'm not admitting guilt, but I recognize there's that evidence and I will plead guilty in exchange for a new sentence of life without parole."

We came to that agreement, we went in front of the court that was having that hearing, we presented that agreement.

The victim's family was consulted.

They stated they supported that agreement.

They did not want Marcellus executed.

- And this deal would've given Marcellus for saying, "I'm innocent, but I wanna litigate this issue of racism in the jury selection," what they call a Batson challenge.

And we found incredible Batson evidence.

- At that moment in time, you know, we thought this would be, or what the resolution would be, but the Attorney General disagreed and didn't like that resolution and so appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court, essentially saying that the court, the lower court didn't have the authority to take that kind of plea on this motion.

- And so unfortunately, and I think tragically, Marcellus was executed when A, we think there's strong proof that he was innocent and B, very powerful proof that there was racial discrimination in the selection of the jury.

- The Marcellus Williams I know, or Khalifa as he went by, was a very kind and thoughtful person.

You know, he would read about other cases that I was working on and other things that were happening and he would send emails of encouragement or emails to check in on how I was doing, right?

In spite of the situation that he was in.

He was very smart.

He was an incredibly talented poet.

And actually, Dame Helen Mirren read one of his poems on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" for National Poetry Day.

- "At last, another's heartbeat, the silhouettes of their bond visible still in the last glow of the sun.

They experience each other and the life of the night as it begins to stir, standing there in silence, holding hands, no rush to go back inside.

There is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being amidst sounds of buzzing chirps, crickets, the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind, fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon.

How strange it is to become aware of another's heartbeat, but forget one's own Finally, love."

That makes me cry.

(audience applauding) Thank you.

- That's so beautiful.

(audience applauding) - I think that's one of the most beautiful poems about love I've ever read.

- You know, he cared deeply about people around him.

He gave back to his community in the prison.

He was the imam, the spiritual leader, whose faith was incredibly important to him.

And he shared that that faith and that kindness openly.

- I think the execution of Marcellus Williams impacted everybody who knew about it.

I think what upset me, besides the fact that I had had some contact with him online and he is a human being and there were terrible questions about his, whether his guilt or innocence.

- But for whatever political reasons, they chose to execute Marcellus Williams, turning him into a iconic martyr.

So they gon' hear Marcellus Williams's name for decades to come.

- I was heartbroken, and I just couldn't believe that with all the evidence and things going on and people writing, you know, that this would happen.

And I just felt like surely, just surely the Governor will do the right thing.

- To this day, I don't understand it.

I still think about him.

And in the back of my head, as often happens with these cases, I keep wondering, "What could I have done more?"

- I screamed and yelled at the top of my lungs that I'm innocent.

And time and time again, I was not believed.

And had I been on death row, I would've been executed.

I had the fortunate benefit of not being on death row.

So in my 23rd year and in my ninth hour, I was eventually heard.

As we all watched the execution of Marcellus Williams.

It was so challenging for me, it was so challenging to me that I had to turn my head, because of the trauma of thinking about what it's like to be innocent, truly innocent, have the power and support of the Midwest Innocence Project and Innocence organizations all across the country behind you.

And despite all of that, to have a needle put in your arms..

I wasn't okay.

I still don't think that I'm okay.

I don't think that we as society should be okay with that reality.

- (chuckles) You know, that's a question we get a lot.

Why is there so much resistance?

And particularly in Missouri, I can't answer that question because you know, as you noted, the Attorney General's office for the last 30 years has opposed every innocence case.

And that's across, you know, both parties, whether there was a Democrat or a Republican in office, regardless of how they came to be, whether they were appointed or elected, there has just become a history of standing against innocence cases, even when the prosecutor agrees that the defendant is innocent.

- What's so astounding is that even when the Attorney General is faced with overwhelming evidence of innocence, particularly in the state of Missouri over the last 20 years or so, that office has still fought every effort to free a person who appears and likely is innocent.

Most people have difficulty understanding it.

I've done stories simply because of that.

And yet it goes on.

I mean, in many of these instances when we are litigating a new case, we're citing back to a case we've already done, 'cause we were the folks that were there.

And so, you know, you look back, you start with Joe Amrine, who was not our client, but who was the first actual innocence case in Missouri.

And then from Joe Amrine, you look at the other exonerations that are coming forward with this fierce battle against the Attorney General until you get to 2016, when we're litigating Rodney Lincoln's case and that loss in Rodney Lincoln when the courts say, "Well, innocence isn't enough unless you're sentenced to death."

And then we keep pushing and get to Lamar Johnson, where we say, "Okay, well innocence isn't enough, but what about if the prosecutor says it's enough?"

And then the court throws up another roadblock.

"Well, yeah, they say it's enough and they have an ethical and constitutional obligation to do something, but there's no law that lets 'em do it."

So then we have to pass a law and we have to go to the legislature.

So then we get that law passed and you'd think, "Oh, well this should be much easier."

No, it still becomes a fight.

Kevin Strichland then, right?

It takes all of that additional time for him to come home.

That same law allows Lamar Johnson to come home.

That same law allows Chris Dunn to come home.

But that's also the same law that was filed that resulted in the execution of Marcellus Williams, even though he's actually innocent.

So what happens is we start in a place where we think the law clearly must be fair.

It keeps being applied unfairly.

We have to go change the law.

And then when we change the law, they say the law isn't doing, you know, the law isn't meant to do what we were there for it to do.

And we have to just keep fighting and fighting, because the reality is the law will only be what all of us agree it should be if we're all pushing for it.

- As a father, I have four kids.

I love each and every one of them.

Each and every one of them loves me and they show me every day.

- I'm just a little fighter, trying to bring awareness, trying to shed light, trying to have a life, because my life was stolen at a very young age.

I missed out on so many opportunities and things that I didn't get to experience or get to do because my life was taken.

And so just trying to start a life for myself and you know, and let people get to see and know me and not what the system has said that I am.

- I'm Christopher Dunn.

A man who's tried to experience freedom after being incarcerated for 34 years.

I am a husband, a father, a son, a brother.

I'm a uncle, I am a caregiver.

I am a person who in which loves life.

A person who has been denied, but who is not gonna shed a tear again or ask for a pity party.

I am living.

No longer existing.

But living.

- They have to get behind the Innocence organizations.

They have to get behind the impacted community groups that are trying to improve policing, forensic science, make prosecution better, and certainly public defense or you know, and that is, you need the public support for those kinds of reforms.

- The number one thing people can do, honestly, is share information and news stories that they hear about cases.

Also know your prosecutor, who decides justice in your jurisdiction, whether that's the prosecutor or Attorney General, and ask them questions.

- [Faye] Learn more about the Midwest Innocence Project and the extent of the work that's been done there.

- We need a lot of help to make this kind of movement work from the ground up.

And it's so, the Midwest Innocence Project is serving a number of states that really need the help.

It does a great job, it's smart on policy.

It's smart in terms of finding ways to get innocent people out of jail, to help take care of the families and to pass legislation that will prevent wrongful convictions and enhance the capability of law enforcement to find the right person.

- Share it out to talk about it when you're hanging around during the holidays, when you're hanging around with your coworkers, bring up the conversations of wrongful convictions and some of the issues that's prevalent across the country.

- As the innocence movement has accomplished by exonerating wrongfully convicted people, in terms of the health of the criminal legal system, we have done far more on the front end.

- We would love to work ourself out of existence.

Some of that includes providing trainings.

For example, we provided trainings, first training to all investigators in the Kansas and Missouri State Public Defender systems, being able to give them the resources they need to effectively investigate the cases on the front end.

And in Missouri, we're still trying to make innocence a claim regardless of your sentence, that should be applied to everyone.

We passed compensation, which is now considered sort of a gold star standard law around the country, but there's still work to do.

We are currently trying to regulate the use of jailhouse informants, require that the state track it and know who they're using and have the information to give to the defense.

The state of Nebraska doesn't recognize innocence as a reason to get outta prison, but they also don't recognize innocence as a reason to get into court, unlike the rest of the country.

Or in Iowa, which is one of the few states in the US still that has never had a DNA exoneration.

A big piece of that we know is 'cause they don't preserve evidence.

- The reason why I've stayed covering these stories is because I'm seeing an impact.

- We are more than just an exoneree.

We are more than just directly impacted individuals.

A lot of us go on, we step into our talents.

So there's ways that people can support by directly looking at what the individual is doing and affording us an opportunity.

- I want you to learn that if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

I am not the exception.

- Don't walk in front of me.

I may not follow.

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead.

Walk beside me and let's be friends.

- So many people like myself was naive about things, about the justice system and people need to know that people go to prison wrongfully and not just men.

There are so many women.

And so I want to share that and spread that there are so many of us, and yet we still have a stigma on us and we still have a target on us and we still have a label on us.

- Don't forget those who are still left behind.

So let's not wait until the last minute or the final hour to throw a hail Mary.

- It is, without question, what are the most important developments of the criminal justice system?

The fact that we now have innocence projects, no question about it.

- We can look at the dozen laws that we've passed or the 15 people that we've brought home in these last 10 years, and certainly we are incredibly proud of that.

But I also think one of the things I'm most proud of is how much we've been able to reach the community.

- It's in our hands and it's really important.

And I think right now, particularly right now, when there is this kind of tough on crime attitude again, it's more important than ever that people realize that you wouldn't wanna sit in prison.

You don't want somebody else either, and you have to be more proactive.

- What I would like to take from this?

I'd like to take my wife hand and just walk.

Just continue to walk for as long as I possibly can until it's my time to go into the ground.

I just wanna be free.

I just want to live a decent, human life and be able to smile.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) - [Announcer] Support for this program is brought to you in part by Health Forward Foundation.