WThis is a list of miscarriage of justice cases. This list includes cases where a convicted individual was later cleared of the crime and either has received an official exoneration, or a consensus exists that the individual was unjustly punished or where a conviction has been quashed and no retrial has taken place, so that the accused is legally assumed innocent. This list is not exhaustive. Crime descriptions with an asterisk indicate that the events were later determined not to be criminal acts.
WLucia de Berk, often called Lucia de B., is a Dutch licensed paediatric nurse, who was the subject of a miscarriage of justice. In 2003, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for four murders and three attempted murders of patients in her care. In 2004, after an appeal, she was convicted of seven murders and three attempts. Her conviction was controversial in the media and amongst scientists, and was questioned by investigative reporter Peter R. de Vries. In October 2008, the case was reopened by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands, as new facts had been uncovered that undermined the previous verdicts. De Berk was freed, and her case was re-tried; she was exonerated in April 2010.
WAlfred Dreyfus was a French artillery officer of Jewish ancestry whose trial and conviction in 1894 on charges of treason became one of the most controversial and polarizing political dramas in modern French history. The incident has gone down in history as the Dreyfus Affair, the reverberations from which were felt throughout Europe. It ultimately ended with Dreyfus's complete exoneration.
WEmil August Fieldorf was a Polish brigadier general who served as deputy commander-in-chief of the Home Army after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.
WIlkka Armas Mikael Kanerva is a Finnish politician and a member of the Parliament of Finland. He was born in Lokalahti, now a part of Uusikaupunki in Southwest Finland. He was the Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2007 to 2008.
WSakae Menda was a Japanese man who was convicted of a double homicide, in 1948, but was later exonerated by retrial in 1983. This was the first time anyone was ever released from death row by retrial in Japan. He is now a leading figure in Japan for the movement to abolish the death penalty.
WFritz Yngvar Moen was a Norwegian man wrongfully convicted of two distinct murders, serving a total of 18 years in prison. After the convictions were quashed, an official inquiry was instigated to establish what had gone wrong in the authorities' handling of the case, and on 25 June 2007 the commission delivered harsh criticism to the police, the prosecution and the courts in what was immediately termed Norway's worst miscarriage of justice of all time.
WCarl Gustaf Christer Pettersson was a Swedish criminal who was a suspect in the 1986 assassination of Olof Palme, the Prime Minister of Sweden. In 1989 he was convicted of the murder in district court but acquitted on appeal the following year.
WAlfred Saalwächter was a high-ranking German U-boat commander during World War I and General Admiral during World War II.
WShibu Soren is an Indian politician who thrice served as Chief Minister of Jharkhand, first in 2005 for 10 day, then from 2008 to 2009 and again from 2009 to 2010. He was sworn in as the third Chief Minister of Jharkhand on 30 December 2009 after winning the Jharkhand Assembly elections. He resigned on 30 May 2010 after failing to obtain coalition support from the Bharatiya Janata Party, his national party partner. He previously represented the Dumka constituency of Jharkhand in the 14th Lok Sabha, and is the President of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) political party, a constituent of the UPA.
WHannah Szenes was a poet and a Special Operations Executive (SOE) member. She was one of 37 Jewish SOE recruits from Mandate Palestine parachuted by the British into Yugoslavia during the Second World War to assist anti-Nazi forces and ultimately in the rescue of Hungarian Jews about to be deported to the German death camp at Auschwitz.
WEric Volz is an American entrepreneur, author, and the managing director of The David House Agency, an international crisis resource agency based in Los Angeles. The New York Times recognized Volz as a highly sought crisis manager. He specializes in strategy for international show trials and other complex political and legal situations abroad.