Sourcing for this story

Statistics and information in this article came from court transcripts of Belynda Goff’s trial in Carroll County Circuit Court in 1996, her direct appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 1997, her petition for post-conviction remedy in Carroll County Circuit Court in 2001 and the state’s appeal to the Arkansas Supreme Court in 2002.

Reporter Cheree Franco also relied on documents related to Stephen Goff’s life insurance policy; transcripts of interviews and reports from the Green Forest Police Department, the Carroll County sheriff’s office, the Arkansas State Police and the Carroll County prosecuting attorney’s office; reports from the state Crime Laboratory and

Roche Biomedical Laboratories; the Bureau of Justice Statistics (bjs.gov); the National Registry of Exonerations (law.umich. edu/special/exoneration); Chris Lindley’s letter to then-Gov. Mike Huckabee; Arkansas Democrat-Gazette archives; Innocence Project correspondence with Carroll County prosecutors; and the Dec. 19 court filing by the Innocence Project on behalf of Belynda Goff.

The article also includes information from interviews with prosecutors and defense attorneys, DNA experts and representatives of the Innocence Project and similar groups.

Members of the Lindley and Goff families also were interviewed.