#5 - Kirstin Lobato
In May of 2001, 18-year old Kirstin Lobato of Panaca, Nevada took a trip to Las Vegas to visit
some friends. What she’d expected to be a relaxing outing to Sin City would ultimately result in her
going to prison for a crime in which she hadn’t been involved. The chain of events began to
unfold when she was accosted in the parking lot of her hotel. Lobato used a knife to fend off the
attacker, slashing in the area of his groin, which in turn made him flee the scene. She was shaken,
but safe, and later told friends and family about the incident. Two months later, after Lobato
had already returned home to Panaca, Las Vegas police discovered the dead body of a man named
Duran Bailey in the parking lot of a bank. He had suffered injuries that were consistent with
Lobato’s story, which they received a tip about a couple weeks later. After falsely connecting the
two incidents, Lobato was arrested for Bailey’s murder and found guilty, in 2002, after she’d
failed to come up with a concrete alibi for the night of his death. She spent 16 years behind bars
all because she’d chosen to defend herself on that fateful summer night. Though her initial
conviction was thrown out, in 2004, she was tried again in 2006 and convicted of manslaughter,
mutilation, and weapons charges. Lobato reached out to the Innocence Project in the hope that
they might get her case reexamined. In 2016, the Nevada Supreme Court granted her wish. This time,
with the help of forensic entomologists brought in by the Innocence Project, the defense was able to
prove that Bailey had been dead since 10 pm, the night before his body was discovered. Lobato had
solid alibis for that specific window of time, so she was acquitted of the charges that had kept her
in jail for nearly two decades. She’s presently focused on moving on with her life, having had
most of her prime years taken away simply because the Las Vegas PD had failed to do their due
diligence during the initial investigation. #4 - Walter Forbes
In 1982, Michigan man Walter Forbes was taken to court over an apartment fire that resulted in
the death of a man named Dennis Hall. Forbes was not a violent man, nor did he possess a criminal
background of any kind. He did, however, have a history with the victim himself. Forbes had
previously broken up a bar fight between Hall and another man. This incident led to Forbes getting
shot by Hall, just a day later, so the prosecution had fairly obvious grounds to conjure
a possible motive during the court proceedings. The case against Forbes eventually hinged on the
testimony of a 19-year-old single mother named Annice Kennebrew, who claimed to have witnessed
him igniting the blaze that ultimately killed Hall. Forbes was subsequently sent to prison,
where he was housed for 38 years, being punished for a murder he didn’t commit. Just
as his conviction rested heavily on Kennebrew’s original statement in court, so too would his
eventual liberation. On June the 8th of 2020, Kennebrew decided to recant her testimony,
admitting that it was all a fictitious statement. She claimed to have been threatened by two men,
leading up to Forbes’ trial, and that if she hadn’t testified against him, they’d come after
her. After getting diagnosed with cancer, nearly 40 years later, Kennebrew wanted to get the burden
of the lie off her chest, while she still had the chance. Forbes had worked with the Michigan
Innocence Clinic for 10 years before he was ultimately released. He became a free man in 2020,
and claimed to have forgiven everyone involved in his wrongful conviction,
including Annice Kennebrew, the woman who’d been pressured into telling a lie that sent him to jail
for the majority of his life. #3 - Jimmy Dennis
22-year-old Jimmy Dennis was on the verge of achieving success
on Philadelphia’s music scene. He had always aspired to become a professional musician,
and those dreams were well within reach in the early ‘90s. In the blink of an eye, however,
Dennis’ plans for the future would enter an irreparable downward spiral. He was arrested
for the murder of 17-year-old Chedell Williams, who was shot dead following an attempted robbery.
Even though there wasn’t even a single piece of physical evidence tying Dennis to Williams’ death,
he was found guilty of her murder by a jury of his peers, and was subsequently given the death
penalty. People would later scrutinize the job done by Dennis’ defense lawyer, whose shortcomings
in court would result in his client spending 25 years behind bars, for a crime he didn’t commit,
and very nearly cost him his life. Dennis’ execution was set two different times over
the course of the quarter century he served but, fortunately for him, they were both eventually
rescheduled. Dennis’ willpower was unwavering. He maintained his innocence throughout the entirety
of his prison term and even refused to pick a last meal as his execution dates drew near. His
resilience was finally rewarded in August of 2016 when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals
granted a reversal of the 1992 ruling that had placed an innocent man on death row for nearly
9,000 days. While in jail, Jimmy continued to work on his music, which he credited with helping
maintain his sanity throughout his ordeal. Even though he was finally free the mental toll that
the prolonged incarceration had taken on Dennis was tremendous. He continued to suffer from
crippling anxiety and paranoia, fearing that he might one day find himself back in jail,
even if he’d done nothing wrong. Today's topic was requested by KPG Doxi Ma, Ms
Pratt and Christine Keeler. If you have any other topics you'd like to learn about, subscribe & let
us know in the comments section below. #2 - Frances Choy
In April of 2003, the Choy family of Brockton, Massachusetts, watched their home go up in flames.
The house fire engulfed much of the property and, in the end, resulted in the deaths of 53-year-old
Anne and Jimmy, aged 64. Following a police investigation, it was determined that someone
had started the fire on purpose. As the hunt for the arsonist responsible began, the prime
suspect became Frances, the 17-year-old daughter of the two victims. She had been rescued from the
blaze by firefighters, along with her 16-year-old nephew, Kenneth. Police soon took Frances into
custody on charges of murdering her parents. She would spend the next 17 years of her life behind
bars with the knowledge that she was innocent of the crime for which she was being punished.
To the rest of the world, unfortunately, she was known as a killer. Even though the first of her
trials resulted in a hung jury, she was ultimately convicted of the murders, in May of 2011. The
judge handed down two life sentences without the possibility of parole. As the years ticked away,
Frances began to lose hope of ever seeing the light of day again. However, she started working
with an attorney from the Boston College Innocence Program, an initiative designed to help exonerate
those falsely convicted of a crime. With the help of her new lawyers, she was able to get back
inside a courtroom, after the discovery of fresh evidence that would prove vital to the retrial. As
it turned out, Kenneth had written a pair of notes detailing how to ignite a house fire in the weeks
leading up to the blaze that killed the Choys. In the initial trial, Kenneth claimed it was Frances
who’d instructed him to write those notes and he was acquitted of the killings, in 2008. A major
oversight was that his clothes had not been tested by the authorities for gasoline the first time
around. Over the course of the retrial, Frances’ clothes were retested and found to be completely
devoid of any gasoline residue. The same could not be said for Kenneth, who’d fled to Hong Kong upon
hearing news that the case was reopened. Frances’ sentence was erased, and she was finally freed
from her wrongful imprisonment. One of the more eye-opening revelations of the retrial
was the discovery of racist and sexist emails sent between the prosecuting attorneys during Frances’
first trials. They held a significant personal bias against her simply because she was an Asian
female, an aspect that could very well have played a part in her initial conviction. While in prison,
Frances earned her bachelor’s degree and was eager to restart her life following her exoneration.
Even so, she’d never get back those 17 years spent in jail, years that were stolen from an
innocent teenager. #1 - Amanda Knox
20-year-old Amanda Knox was an exchange student living in Italy, in 2007. She was taking advantage
of the University of Washington’s study abroad program and shared an apartment with a fellow
exchange student named Meredith Kercher. After spending the night with her boyfriend,
Raffaele Sollecito, Knox returned home to find blood all over the bathroom.
She went to ask Kercher about it, but her bedroom door was locked and she was not responding from
inside. Knox immediately called the police, who discovered Kercher’s dead body in the room.
In the investigation that followed, Knox did her best to aid the Italian authorities in
their efforts to track down Kercher’s killer. While being interviewed at the police station,
Knox told officers that she had received a text that night from Patrick Lumumba,
her boss at the restaurant where she worked, saying she didn’t have to come into work.
Knox subsequently went to Sollecito’s house and didn’t return to the apartment she shared with
Kercher until the morning her body was found. Knox maintained this original sequence of events
throughout the investigation. Despite her solid alibi, Knox was being portrayed negatively in the
Italian media and the investigating officers were consistently hostile and accusatory towards her
during their interactions. After hours and hours of psychological pressure and, to some degree,
manipulation, the police forced Amanda into implicating herself, her boyfriend,
and her boss in Kercher’s murder. They were all arrested, though Lumumba was eventually released.
Knox was sentenced to 26 years behind bars while Sollecito faced 25 years himself. Meanwhile,
a man named Rudy Guede was found guilty on the charge of murdering Meredith Kercher
after his bloody fingerprints were discovered in the apartment. Guede had been in jail just
days before the killing, serving time for burglarizing a nursery school, in Milan,
while wielding an 11-inch-long kitchen knife. American forensic experts publicly contested
Knox’s conviction by Italian prosecutors, saying the evidence at the scene of the
crime simply didn’t support the notion that she was involved in any way. After 4 years spent
in an Italian prison, both Knox and Sollecito were granted their rightful freedom in 2011,
though it wasn’t until March of 2015 that they were officially exonerated of all charges.
The memoir Amanda wrote, documenting her harrowing experiences, became an international bestseller,
and she now hosts a show on Facebook Watch that’s centered on stories of women who were
publicly shamed. She uses the character assassination she had faced at the hands
of the Italian mainstream media to inform her perspective on the subjects of her program.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather serve on a jury that wrongfully convicts an innocent
person or a jury that lets a dangerous killer walk free? Let us know in the comments section below!