STOLEN LIVES
• In 1989, a young woman was beaten and raped while jogging through New York's Central Park. Five teenagers, who became known as the Central Park Five, served 6-13 years in prison before DNA evidence exonerated them. They were later awarded nearly $66.5 million in compensation.
• After serving 23 years in New Orleans for crimes including killing a British tourist in 1993, Robert Jones was released in 2015 when another man was proven to have committed the crime.
• Richard Phillips received a life sentence after his murder conviction in 1971. After spending 45 years in jail, he was exonerated in 2018 and awarded $2.2m in compensation. His artworks, which he painted in his cell and continues to produce, now sell for thousands of dollars.
• Gene Gibson, a Pintupi man from the remote community of Kiwirrkurra in WA, was sentenced in 2014 to seven-and-a-half years in prison after admitting to unlawfully causing the death of tourist Joshua Warneke in Broome. He spent five years in prison before his conviction was quashed after Gibson argued he did not understand the court process or the instructions given to him through an interpreter. He was awarded a $1.3 million ex-gratia payment by the West Australian Government.
• Deborah Milke spent more than two decades on death row after being accused of hiring two men to murder her 4-year-old son in 1989. In 2015 an Arizona judge officially cleared her of any crime after dismissing the testimony of a now-discredited detective who said she confessed.