Daniele Selby

Donate Donate Once Donate Monthly Champions of Innocence Other Ways to Give Over the past three decades, nearly 300 women have been exonerated. Updated on March. 12, 2024: This piece was originally published on March 1, 2020, and has been updated to reflect the latest statistics. Women’s History Month is an occasion to recognize advancements in gender equality and the achievements of women around the world in everything from media to science to criminal justice reform.

Donate Donate Once Donate Monthly Other Ways to Give New DNA evidence supports what he’s always said: He didn’t commit the crime. Morton Johnson has spent over half his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit — the murder of 70-year-old Henrietta Nickens in Chester, Pennsylvania. In fact, DNA evidence excluded Mr. Johnson, who was 18 at the time of the crime, as the attacker before his trial even began. Yet 22 years later, Mr. Johnson is still fighting to prove his innocence.

Convicted as teenagers, the West Memphis Three have been working to clear their names for 30 years and are seeking new DNA testing. Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley — known as the West Memphis Three — have been trying to clear their names for 30 years. In 1993, Mr. Misskelley, Mr. Baldwin, and Mr. Echols (16, 17, and 18, respectively, at the time) were arrested for the murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas.