Exonerated! A long legal battle culminates in the Riverside County, California DA dismissing murder charges against Kimberly Long.

Long, 45, was convicted of killing her live-in boyfriend in 2005. After serving 7 years in prison and 4 years on bail pending her appeal case, California Innocence Project lawyers were able to convince the trial judge in 2016 that Long’s defense attorney made a critical error that affected the outcome of the trial. But the legal battle did not end there. Pick up the rest of the story of this long-fought battle for justice in the LA Times article. Cheers to Kimberly Long and the attorneys at the San Diego-based California Innocence Project! You did it!

18 years ago, Danyel Smith was convicted and imprisoned for causing his baby son's death by violently shaking him. Now, according to his lawyers from Southern Center for Human Rights , advancements in scientific understandings prove what Danyel has said all along: he is innocent.

According to the AJC, "Over the past decade [...] a number of medical experts and legal scholars have called into question the diagnoses used years ago to help convict people of shaken baby deaths. The National Registry of Exonerations lists 19 people who have been cleared."

“There’s no question there are more out there,” said Keith Findley, a University of Wisconsin law professor who has written extensively on the subject. “The question is: How many and how do we find them?”"

Why do states need conviction integrity units? Because innocent people should not remain in prison for even one more day.

Mario Stinchcomb just became the first person exonerated by Fulton County's Conviction Integrity Unit, exonerated after 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit–almost six months to the day after the Dept. of Justice granted $500K to expand.

Congratulations to Mr. Stinchomb and his family, to his fantastic attorneys at Shein, Brandenburg and Schrope, and to the Fulton County CIU!

"I didn’t always detest this term. But hearing officers use it as an insult reminded me to call incarcerated people — including myself — by our names."

"The questions I’d been asking – Inmate or prisoner? Ex-convict or formerly incarcerated person? – were too simplistic... intent and context are often more important than buzzwords."

We're excited to share (and read!) the Language Project, a new reporting project from The Marshall Project that examines language's direct impact on the criminal legal system–and more importantly, how we use it to fix it.