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FIGHTING FOR THE INNOCENT Cheri Hayden Updated November 26, 2025 Ms. Cheri Hayden is innocent and has been wrongly convicted and imprisoned for over 17 years for a crime she knew nothing about and did not commit. After being overturned TWICE by the Louisiana Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, on…

By Phoebe Jones Caption: John Floyd with his dog Maggie outside of his home in Ridgeland, Mississippi. (Phoebe Jones/WWNO) “Peacocks are sacred birds, you know,” John Floyd tells me on a cool day in mid-February outside of his home in Ridgeland, Mississippi. We are seated next to a pond behind…

Organizations previously filed amicus brief highlighting those wrongfully convicted by non-unanimous juries October 7, 2019 – Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear arguments in Ramos v. Louisiana, in which the Court will decide whether the U.S. Constitution requires jury verdicts in criminal cases to be unanimous. The Innocence…

Louisianans will get a historic opportunity November 6th to decide whether a non-unanimous split jury vote of 10-2 is enough to condemn a person to prison for the rest of their life. For 120 years, Louisiana has been the only state to allow its citizens to be convicted and sentenced…

A 59-year-old man who had been sentenced to life imprisonment for a murder he did not commit was released from the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Gerald Manning was 17 when he was sentenced for the rape and murder of Vonda Harris in 1977. A recent DNA test proved Manning’s innocence, and…

Standing in the prison yard at Angola, Robert Jones learned a lesson from a fellow inmate, a boxing instructor, about fighting. It was the mid 1990s, and Jones was still reeling from the life sentence he received after a jury found him guilty of rape, kidnapping and robbery, plus a…