The Innocence Institute of Point Park University
An investigative reporting organization that probes allegations of wrongful convictions.
David Munchinski was released on September 30, 2011 after spending 25 years in prison. He was wrongly convicted of the 1988 double murder known as the "Bear Rocks Killings."
Professor William Moushey and his students at the Innocence Institute have been reporting about David Munchinski's case since 2002. Below is the original series followed by more recent updates.
A Question of …
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Crowds of family, friends, and reporters greeted Terrell Johnson when he was released from prison having served 18 years for a murder he did not commit. Updated articles follow this original journalism from September 21, 2003. "Terrell Johnson admits to being a street dope peddler but says he's no killer,"
by Bill Moushey.
Over the past two years, students at Point Park College examined …
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The attorney for David Munchinski, convicted of the 1977 murders of two men in Bullskin Township, said Tuesday that he plans to file a motion in federal court to dismiss all charges against his client because prosecutors have not brought Munchinski to trial in the court-ordered 120 days.
Noah Geary, attorney for 59-year-old Munchinski, said he will file the motion to dismiss the charges with …
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JACKSON, Miss. — For a long time, if a body turned up in Mississippi it had a four-in-five chance of ending up in front of Dr. Steven T. Hayne.
Between the late 1980s and the late 2000s, Dr. Hayne had the field of forensic pathology in Mississippi almost to himself, performing thousands of autopsies and delivering his findings around the state as an expert witness in civil and criminal …
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Juries trust the memory of witnesses even when they shouldn’t.
Noris and Sherl Hilde were camping in the Umpqua National Forest in Oregon when a stranger with a large caliber hunting rifle approached their trailer in 2003. It was dark outside, around 10 p.m., and a shot rang out and hit Sherl while she was looking out the window. Noris called 911, but he was shot and killed while still on …
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Anthony Graves was wrongly convicted and sent to death row in 1994 based largely on the testimony of an alleged accomplice in the fiery murders of six people. The accomplice, while on the execution gurney, admitted he was the lone killer. Ten years later, in 2010, Graves was exonerated.
Like Graves, Muneer Deeb, Michael Toney and Robert Springsteen were sentenced to death after trials that …
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BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese man who served 11 years of a life sentence for a wrongful conviction of check fraud was awarded a record state compensation of 825,000 yuan ($131,000) this week.
Guangdong's provincial supreme court granted the compensation to 39-year-old Huang Liyi for deprivation of personal freedom as well as psychological and emotional distress, the state-run Southern Metropolis …
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By Associated Press, Published: November 13
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A New York woman who spent more than 13 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of killing her teenage daughter has reached a $2.7 million settlement with the state, her attorney said Tuesday.
Lynn DeJac Peters, whose conviction was overturned in 2007 on the basis of DNA evidence, initially sought more than $10 million in …
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By Louis Natali, professor at Temple University's Beasley School of Law(Opinion)
Since medieval times, confessions, known as the "queen of evidence," have been relied on to help police and prosecutors deal with terrible crimes. And for nearly as long, interrogation practices have generated fear, criticism, wrongful convictions, and false confessions. In a symposium today, the Temple Law Review …
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