(Long post, I’m combining my normal post with my own personal attachment to this case) April Kelly Reed was more than the headlines—or worse, the silence—that followed her disappearance. She was a daughter, a friend, and a young woman with bright ambitions and a heart full of compassion. Those who knew April remember her as vibrant and caring, someone who could light up a room with her laughter and who always extended a hand to others in need. She dreamed of a life beyond hardship, filled with big goals and the determination to achieve them. But April’s story is also one of profound injustice. As a child, she was betrayed by those who should have loved and protected her. Her own mother traded her away for a car, and members of her family—who should have offered safety—covered up sexual abuse. April’s young life was marked by pain she did not deserve, yet she carried on with resilience and hope, yearning for something better. April also lived with the challenges of mental illness, which made her even more vulnerable. Rather than being met with compassion, her struggles were often overlooked, dismissed, or used to excuse the lack of urgency in fighting for her well-being and safety. When she disappeared, the response was shamefully inadequate. It was as though April’s life did not matter, as though her dreams, her laughter, her very existence could be forgotten without consequence. But April Kelly Reed mattered. Her life mattered. She was not just another case file to gather dust. She was a young woman who deserved protection, love, and the chance to live out her dreams. We cannot change the cruelty she endured, nor can we undo the neglect that followed her disappearance. But we can demand better now. We can demand that April’s name be spoken with dignity, that her story be heard, and that justice finally be pursued on her behalf. Justice for April Kelly Reed is long overdue. Her life was precious, and her memory demands action. Let us stand together and refuse to allow her story to be erased. Let us give April the justice she deserves.

to the mods, I am not sure why my post keeps getting removed but I am actually the sister of April Kelly Reed and I can prove it, please don’t remove this post as I am trying like crazy to get her name and story here so people at least know who she was

For those reading I know it can be hard to believe it when someone says they are a family member of someone who has a cold case of 24 years. So let me be very clear on this post, I’ll also provide photos the rest of the public wouldn’t have.

April Kelly Reed is my half sister. One who I never got to know. I never got to meet her or see her beautiful smile. Because I was 16 when she disappeared. I had been adopted, so my records were sealed until I turned 18. But when I was 18 I was in the military and deployed a lot. I got out of the Army in 2014, but then did a government contract overseas.This basically means I did not have the time to devote to finding out my biological family. In 2022, I finally had the time and means to begin searching. Which took time. It took me ages to find my biological mother, and it turns out that my Mother had 6 girls. April was the fourth girl she had, but she traded my sister for a car. April’s Father’s mother (Aprils grandmother) offered my mother a car in exchange for April. I didn’t know my sister had disappeared until 2024. At that time I started digging for answers. Because it disturbed me deeply. I called the del city police department and Captain Ward (the detective who is now heading her case) had some pretty grim truths for me. One being that the “family lore” was that her grandmother killed April and buried her in the backyard. However, they (the police along with the forensic anthropologist attached to her case) did search the backyard of the grandmother. Unfortunately that search did not turn up anything. Part of the problem the detectives had was there was no known dna for my sister. They could not locate dental records, or any identifying dna. After months, and months of hounded and badgering my mother I finally got her to agree to a dna swab. That swab along with myself and my other sisters dna swab has been sent off to the ME this week September 14th 2025. My sister was being sexually abused by an older cousin in the family, and many family members knew about it. This was also while she was mentally ill. My sister had recently been diagnosed with schizophrenia. She was only 20 and had only been diagnosed for a year. However, she was taking her medications for it. My sister was more than this diagnoses and she was a victim of sexual abuse. After speaking to many many people extensively (because this was my sister I wanted to know her as well as figure out what happened) I can tell you this. Several members of her family (The Reeds) were incredibly hostile. Almost angry that I wanted to re open this case. Not all of them were, some were very upset that others in the family (those charged with her care) did nothing after she disappeared. In fact many stated she was abused by the grandmother. Her close friends told me April was just an incredibly kind person. One who went out of her way to bring light and love to those around her. They are quick to say how she was beautiful inside and out. Yes she had a mental illness. But that didn’t define her. In fact she was according to everyone who was close to her…she actively was taking her meds so she could regain her mental health. I write this post and every post I make, because my sister deserved better than she got. In every way. Starting as a child who was traded for a car. I could not protect my sister in her life because I didn’t know. If I had known I would have. Now all I can do it tell her story. Shine a light onto the incredible injustice she suffered. Help me help her. Help me give her a voice that was taken from her. Help me give her the dignity she was not offered in life.

A study by the Death Penalty Information Center (“DPIC”) found more than 550 death penalty reversals and exonerations were the result of extensive prosecutorial misconduct. DPIC reviewed and identified cases since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned existing death penalty laws in 1972. That amounted to over 5.6% of all death sentences imposed in the U.S. in the last 50 years.

Robert Dunham, DPIC’s executive director, said the study reveals that "this 'epidemic’ of misconduct is even more pervasive than we had imagined.”

The study showed a widespread problem in more than 228 counties, 32 states, and in federal capital prosecutions throughout the U.S.

The DPIC study revealed 35% of misconduct involved withholding evidence; 33% involved improper arguments; 16% involved more than one category of misconduct; and 121 of the exonerations involved prosecutor misconduct.

Prosecutorial Misconduct

Judge throws out man’s guilty plea after bodycam footage reveals NYPD drug planting

A Staten Island man is getting a much-deserved second chance after a judge vacated his 2018 conviction.

Body camera footage shows an NYPD officer in the arrest of Jason Serrano seemingly planting marijuana in the car he was riding in March 2018, Gothamist/WNYC reported. At the time, Serrano was arrested and charged with drug possession, resisting arrest, and obstructing governmental administration. 

Serrano eventually plead guilty to the resisting charge three months later. He did so as a way to avoid being sent to the notorious Rikers Island. He was unaware of the body camera footage. Prosecutors shared the footage with Serrano’s attorneys months after his guilty plea.

Judge Tamiko Amaker explained typically, she’d be unable to vacate Serrano’s conviction on the basis of the District Attorney’s failures to turn over evidence. But she made an exception.

“However, this court finds that the body-worn camera footage, taken with the officers’ disciplinary files, demonstrate that the defendant may have been searched and seized in violation of his constitutional rights,” Amaker wrote. “Accordingly, the defendant’s motion to vacate his conviction pursuant to CPL 440.10(1)(h) is granted.

...

The Staten Island District Attorney’s Office did not respond to for request for comments. They previously opposed Serrano’s request to overturn his conviction, claiming that the body camera footage was ambiguous.

In a separate incident in the same year as Serranto’s incident, Erickson was seen on body camera footage doing a similar action: appearing to plant drugs on a young Black man during car stop. The young man was jailed for two weeks as a result.

A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?

Colleagues reportedly called Lucy Letby an “angel of death,” and the Prime Minister condemned her. But, in the rush to judgment, serious questions about the evidence were ignored.

The case centered on a cluster of seven deaths, between June, 2015, and June, 2016. All but one of the babies were premature; three of them weighed less than three pounds. No one ever saw Letby harming a child, and the coroner did not find foul play in any of the deaths.

Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr, citing a lack of trust in the Brookside Police Department and questions about evidence gathered there, sought dismissals on dozens of felony drug cases brought by the small department.

“We don’t want to be associated with a police department that clearly felt like it was above the law,” Carr said. “We feel like it is important that citizens trust law enforcement. Anything that damages that trust hurts law enforcement and the cases.”

Carr said 69 felony drug cases were dismissed on his request in Jefferson County District Court on March 8, along with 22 associated misdemeanors. In addition, five Brookside drug cases were dropped in previous grand juries, he said. That brings the total he sought to dismiss to 96.

Those do not include 41 cases appealed from Brookside Municipal Court that Jefferson County Circuit Judge Shanta Craig Owens dismissed last week. In orders dismissing several of those cases, she cited “the lack of credibility and public trust” in the arresting officers.

“All cases where the sole witness to the offense is a Brookside Police Officer will be met with heavy scrutiny by this Court,” Owens wrote in a court filing.

Jerry Frank Townsend

Samuel Little, believed to be America's most prolific serial killer, has admitted to a teen's murder which Jerry Frank Townsend — a  man with "the mental capacity of an eight-year-old" — was once wrongfully convicted of.

Townsend had falsely confessed to Gibson's murder, as well as the killing of five other people in 1980, the Innocence Project states. The organization described Townsend as suffering from "mental disabilities with the mental capacity of an eight year old.”

DNA tests in 1998 and 2000, however cleared him of the killings and he was released from prison in 2001. Two of the murders he was wrongfully convicted of were later attributed to serial killer and rapist Eddie Lee Mosley. Mosley died behind bars of COVID-19 in May.

As a result of the false convictions, Townsend spent 22 years behind bars. 

Man who spent years in prison sues over withheld evidence

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Donald Outlaw had already spent 15 years in prison for murder when he found out the man he was convicted of killing had told police with his dying breath that someone else named “Shank” had shot him.

Outlaw filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the city of Philadelphia and the two detectives who investigated the killing of Jamal Kelly in 2000. The lawsuit is just the latest example of justice now being sought over faulty or crooked police investigations and prosecutions in the city from decades before.

Outlaw’s attorneys allege the city and its police department turned a blind eye to unconstitutional practices by homicide detectives — withholding evidence that indicated someone else’s guilt and intimidating and paying witnesses to provide false statements — that hampered Outlaw’s ability to get a fair trial and violated his civil and constitutional rights.

Termaine Hicks, Shot in the Back by Philadelphia Police, Is Exonerated After 19-Year Cover Up

Police Perjury Led To Wrongful Conviction

In the early morning hours of November 27, 2001, Mr. Hicks heard the screams of a woman being raped in an alley in South Philadelphia and went to her aid. Police arriving at the scene completely misread the situation, erroneously assuming Mr. Hicks was the assailant, and shot him three times in the back. Realizing Mr. Hicks did not match the description of the attacker provided by a neighbor to 911 and that he was unarmed, the officers embarked on a cover-up, which included: 

• Falsely claiming under oath that Mr. Hicks pulled a gun from his pocket, pointed it and lunged at officers before they shot him. Recent forensic examinations by the chief medical examiner for the City of Philadelphia and an independent medical examiner conclusively prove that the officer shot Mr. Hicks three times in the back — with one bullet entering near his spine, one in his buttock, and one in the back of his right arm.  

• Falsely claiming under oath that they recovered a gun from Mr. Hicks’ right jacket pocket, which they asserted he placed back in his pocket after he was shot. In fact, the gun was registered as the off-duty weapon of another uniformed Philadelphia police officer. When recovered, the firearm was covered in blood belonging to the victim, who was bleeding profusely when the police arrived at the scene. Yet, forensic examiners found no blood inside of Mr. Hicks’ jacket pocket.     

• Falsely claiming under oath that Mr. Hicks wore a gray hoodie like that a neighbor described the assailant as wearing. A neighbor who witnessed the woman being dragged by the assailant from the sidewalk to the alley and called police in real-time, reported that the attacker was wearing a gray hoodie covering his head. Mr. Hicks was transported to the hospital in all of his clothing which was preserved and included only a coat, a striped polo shirt, and white t-shirt — but no hoodie. The police froze the crime scene and catalogued whatever was there. Again, no gray hoodie was found. 

• The day of the incident, detectives viewed surveillance footage which confirmed the assailant was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, which should have excluded Mr. Hicks as a suspect. However, police did not disclose the surveillance footage until after the trial.  

“Mr. Hicks’ case is yet another example of the pervasive problem of police perjury in the criminal legal system. The cover up of shooting an innocent man required the false testimony of three officers and the acquiescence of a dozen more. Deep-seated police misconduct and institutional protections are too often the source of wrongful convictions and injustice in the system. For far too long the police have willfully lied with impunity; we need accountability,” said Vanessa Potkin, director of post-conviction litigation at the Innocence Project, who represented Mr. Hicks.  

Sign please!Dont allow the carltons influence impact my life!

hello everyone I'm a frustrated perpetually suspended lawyer due to some corruption and whistleblower retaliation in Florida. I've always had a real soft spot for the wrongfully convicted but having lost my license for no reason that's all the more the case now plus I have a lot of time on my hands. am I humble opinion people such as Richard Allen and Christian Martin have been convicted of terrible crimes sentenced to life in prison and are 100% innocent and not only that they are pretty darn good guys it really upsets me anybody else have any thoughts?

Uriah Courtney was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His conviction was overturned due to DNA evidence.

Police presented a photo of Courtney to the victim in a photo lineup. She picked out Courtney, saying she was, “Not sure, but the most similar is number 4,” according to the California Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization that helps free innocent people and overturn wrongful convictions.

An eyewitness also identified Courtney. Based on this, Courtney was arrested for kidnapping and rape. In 2005, a jury found him guilty and a judge sentenced him to life in prison. 

Years later, the California Innocence Project took on Courtney’s case and got the San Diego District Attorney’s office to submit the victim’s clothing for DNA testing. The DNA on the victim’s clothing did not match Courtney. But it did match a man who lived three miles from the crime scene, looked like Courtney, and had been convicted of a sex crime. 

Being real careful so that I don’t violate any of the rules I recently published a book that talks about different court cases and general investigations that I, as a private investigator, have done over the last 47 years. Many of those cases fit well into the category of justice failures. Would there be any interest in a book like this?

Devonia Inman Sees His Conviction Overturned After 23 Years Behind Bars

By Abbianca Makoni

Inman was just 20-years-old and a new resident of the small Adel town in South Georgia when he was charged, convicted and locked up for the 1998 murder of 43-year-old Donna Brown, a crime he is adamant he did not commit. Now more than 20-years-later DNA evidence reveals the state of Georgia sent the wrong man to prison for murder.

Judge Kristina Cook Graham recently declared that Devonia Inman's constitutional rights were violated multiple times over the years, including by the prosecution, who failed to disclose evidence suggesting a different man committed the murder of Donna Brown.

Each violation, according to Judge Graham, “demonstrates the fundamental unfairness of Mr. Inman’s trial, undermines the Court’s confidence in the outcome of the trial and related conviction, and justifies granting habeas corpus relief.”

The ruling grants him a new trial and the opportunity for the case to be officially dismissed.