No Place Like Home - The Innocence Project
Heidi • January 22, 2025
Five exonerees reflect on living free after their wrongful convictions
In "Homecoming: Rebuilding a Life After Wrongful Conviction," the Innocence Projects sits down with five exoneree clients to discuss their lives after their wrongful incarceration and what living free means to them. Collectively between the five clients, Tyrone Day, Rosa Jimenez, Leonard Mack, Perry Lott, and Renay Lynch, 104 years were stolen from their lives, and the lives of their families and communities.
- Tyrone Day: In May 2023, Tyrone Day was finally exonerated after the Dallas County district attorney dismissed his 1990 sexual assault charge based on new evidence of his innocence. He had pleaded guilty to the crime under the impression that he would reunite with his daughters after serving four years in prison, but, instead, he served nearly 26 years.
- Rosa Jimenez - A mother to a one-year-old daughter and seven months pregnant, Rosa was arrested in 2003 after a child in her care accidentally choked on paper towels. Following the child’s death, she was charged with murder. While awaiting trial, she gave birth to her son Emmanuel and held him for just five hours before he and his sister were taken away and placed in foster care.
- Leonard Mack - Forty-seven years after being wrongly convicted of rape in New York, Leonard Mack, a Vietnam War veteran, was exonerated in 2023 thanks to new DNA testing of crime scene evidence. To date, his wrongful conviction is the longest-known case to be overturned based on new DNA evidence by the Innocence Project.
- Perry Lott - Lott was passionate about illustrations before a 1988 rape conviction upended his life in Oklahoma. Despite the absence of physical evidence connecting him to the crime, he was convicted solely based on the survivors’ identification of him. He subsequently spent 30 years in prison before he was released in 2018. In 2023, the district attorney’s office accepted the post-conviction DNA test results that proved his innocence and vacated his conviction.
- Renay Lynch - In 2024, Lynch became the 250th person to be freed by the Innocence Project since the organization’s founding in 1992. Wrongly convicted of a 1995 murder and robbery in New York, she spent 24 years in prison. She was released in January 2022, and continued to fight for her innocence. Post-conviction reexamination of crime scene fingerprint evidence ultimately led to her exoneration.
The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone.
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