Thomas Sierra, center, exits the George N. Leighton Criminal Courthouse on Tuesday. (Matt Masterson / Chicago Tonight)

Thomas Sierra, 41, spent more than half his life in prison, convicted of a murder he has claimed from the beginning he didn’t commit. On Tuesday, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office dropped the charges. “It’s a bittersweet situation,” Sierra said.

“It’s a brand new beginning for me,” said Leonard Gipson, one of 15 men who had drug convictions vacated by a judge Thursday. The convictions stemmed from arrests made more than a decade ago by disgraced former Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts.

(Thomas Hawk / Flickr)

According to data from the National Registry of Exonerations, Illinois has a false confession rate more than three times higher than the national average. Is there “a culture in Chicago of solving cases by confession?”

More than 2,000 exoneration cases are on record in the U.S., according to the National Registry of Exonerations. Only a handful of people appear on that list twice, and one of them is Chicago native Dana Holland.

(Matt Masterson / Chicago Tonight)

More than a dozen residents of the former Ida B. Wells housing project say they were framed and intimidated by a former Chicago Police Department sergeant. Now they are seeking to have their convictions overturned.

Juan Rivera (© Northwestern Pritzker School of Law)

A new book tells the stories of people wrongfully convicted of a crime – and how they came to be released.

Released from prison, a group of wrongfully convicted men remake themselves as blues musicians.

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