Years Lost

Every wrongful conviction can be measured in years: birthdays, graduations and funerals missed while an innocent person sat in a cell. Years Lost tells the stories of people who were convicted of crimes they did not commit, or whose convictions came apart decades later, and each entry starts with that number. We look at what went wrong in each case, from hidden evidence and paid witnesses to false confessions and junk science. Then we show the Texas laws written to stop it from happening again, and how a defense lawyer uses them today.