Robert Earl Hayes

• The clearest example I found was Robert Earl Hayes.
  • In 2022, Broward prosecutors said new DNA testing implicated Hayes in a 1990 Florida murder for which he had previously been acquitted.
  • Prosecutors also noted that the Innocence Project of New York had asked them to review Hayes’s innocence claims involving both his New York conviction and the Florida acquittal.

Repeat Offenders

• https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7450&context=jclc&httpsredir=1&referer=&utm_source=chatgpt.com

  • A 2013 study found that in a sample of 118 exonerees, 45 people, or 38.1%, were convicted of at least one crime after release.
  • A related 2014 study found:
    • 31.6% of exonerees whose records were expunged committed a post-exoneration offense.
    • 50% of exonerees whose records were not expunged committed a post-exoneration offense.

• There is also evidence that many exonerees had criminal histories unrelated to the crime for which they were wrongfully convicted.

  • One post-exoneration study reported that 56.8% of exonerees in its sample had at least one conviction before the crime for which they were later exonerated.
  • That does not mean they were guilty of the crime that led to the exoneration.
  • It does mean that some exonerees were not otherwise crime-free people.

• https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7478&context=jclc&utm_source=chatgpt.com

  • This is the study reporting that 31.6% of exonerees whose records were expunged committed a post-exoneration offense.

Here is a cleaner table version, with the extra reporting context and Sheldon Johnson added.

Main takeaway

• I did not find a trustworthy public count showing that the main Innocence Project has repeatedly gotten people out of jail who were later proven guilty of the same crime. 
• I also did not find a public, Innocence-Project-specific count of released clients who later became repeat offenders. 
• The strongest organization-specific example I found for the second issue is Eugene Henton, who was genuinely exonerated in one case but later imprisoned on unrelated charges. 
• Sheldon Johnson should be treated separately: he is relevant to criticism of criminal-justice reform advocacy, but based on the sources I found, he was not an Innocence Project exoneration client and therefore does not belong in a clean tally of “people the Innocence Project got released.” 

Faking Evidence

Here is a more careful breakdown of that claim.

• What the allegation is
  • In June 2024, The San Francisco Standard reported that Marritte Funches, a convicted murderer and key witness in Maurice Caldwell’s exoneration case, said he had lied when he earlier claimed Caldwell was innocent. Funches also said he had an off-and-on romantic relationship with Paige Kaneb, a lawyer at the Northern California Innocence Project (NCIP), and that Kaneb knew he had lied. The Standard said it reviewed texts, court transcripts, and taped calls that corroborated many aspects of the relationship and surrounding contacts.
• Important distinction
  • This was not the main New York-based Innocence Project. It involved the Northern California Innocence Project, which is housed at Santa Clara University and is organizationally separate.
• What Caldwell’s original exoneration rested on
  • Caldwell’s conviction was overturned after nearly 20 years in prison. NCIP’s position was that the original case was deeply flawed, including eyewitness problems and ineffective assistance of counsel. Funches’ admission that he was involved in the murder and that Caldwell was not the accomplice was an important part of the innocence presentation, but it was not the only issue in the case. NCIP still says it stands by Caldwell’s exoneration.
• Why this became such a major scandal
  • The core problem is not merely that an attorney had poor judgment. The allegation is that a lawyer representing an innocence claimant had a romantic relationship with a crucial witness, while that witness was helping support the claim that the client was innocent. That creates obvious concerns about witness coaching, credibility, inducements, conflicts of interest, and disclosure duties.
• The “false confession” part
  • It is more precise to say Funches later recanted or disavowed his earlier exculpatory statements and claimed they were false. Public reporting I found does not show that a court has now conclusively determined that Caldwell was in fact guilty because of this recantation. What exists publicly is:
    • Funches later said he lied.
    • NCIP said it still stands by Caldwell’s exoneration.
    • The matter triggered outside investigations.
• The “$8 million settlement” part
  • Caldwell later received an $8 million settlement from San Francisco for his wrongful-conviction civil case. That figure is well reported.
• Was the relationship allegedly used to help secure that settlement?
  • Reporting in August 2024 said a State Bar complaint alleged that Kaneb and civil attorney Terry Gross promised Funches half of any funds Caldwell won in the civil case in exchange for favorable testimony. That is a serious allegation, but from the public sources I found, it remains an allegation under investigation, not an adjudicated finding.
• What official or institutional fallout followed
  • After the reporting came out, multiple investigations were reported:
    • the State Bar of California
    • the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office
    • Santa Clara University, which houses NCIP
  • By October 2024, The Standard reported that Paige Kaneb was no longer with NCIP. A university spokesperson did not publicly tie her departure to any concluded finding, but the departure followed the scandal and investigations.
• What courts had already said about Caldwell before this scandal
  • A California appellate decision from 2018 makes clear the case was already complicated and messy. It noted numerous inconsistencies over the long history of the case and stated that the evidence for Caldwell’s claim that he was not the shotgun shooter was “eclipsed by the evidence of his role in the murder.” That matters because it shows the Caldwell case was controversial even before the 2024 reporting about Funches and Kaneb.
• A crucial nuance about “exoneration” here
  • Some public commentary overstates the legal posture by implying a court definitively found Caldwell factually innocent. Public summaries indicate the habeas court vacated the conviction, and the retrial was later dismissed, but there was not a clean judicial finding of factual innocence in the broadest sense. That distinction is important when people discuss whether this is a case of an innocence organization “freeing a guilty killer.”
• Most defensible summary
  • The strongest version of the story is:
    • a key witness in Caldwell’s release later said he lied,
    • that witness had a romantic relationship with NCIP lawyer Paige Kaneb,
    • there were allegations of inducements tied to Caldwell’s later civil recovery,
    • the matter triggered bar, university, and city investigations,
    • and Kaneb later left NCIP.
  • The weaker and less careful version is:
    • “the Innocence Project was caught using a romance to knowingly manufacture a false confession and steal $8 million.”
  • Based on what I found publicly, that stronger accusation goes beyond what has been conclusively proven in public reporting. The public record currently supports serious allegations and serious credibility problems, not a final adjudicated conclusion on every part of the accusation.
• Why critics see this as such a big deal
  • Even if one brackets the ultimate innocence question, the scandal is damaging because innocence organizations rely heavily on moral credibility, especially when using recantations, jailhouse witnesses, and post-conviction reconstruction of old cases. If a key witness was romantically entangled with the lawyer and later says he lied, it undermines confidence not just in that case, but in the screening and ethical safeguards around similar work. This is an inference based on the reported facts and the structure of innocence litigation.