Miscarriages of Justice where an innocent person is falsely convicted of a crime in Live-Action TV series.
General:
- Happens just about all the damned time in daytime Soap Operas, where the continuous narrative structure lends itself to this sort of shenanigans. If an innocent is framed for a major crime (usually murder), you can bet your bottom dollar they will be found guilty, sent to jail, and have a thoroughly rotten time for a few weeks before being found not guilty on appeal.
- A spectacularly successful example was the wrongful imprisonment of Deidre Rachid in Coronation Street in 1997, with even the newly-elected British Prime Minister Tony Blair speaking up for the "Free Deidre" campaign.
- Soap's first season ends with the innocent Jessica being convicted of Peter's murder and sent to jail. She was freed when Chester suddenly confessed to the murder in question.
By Series:
- The A-Team:
- The A-Team were convicted of "A Crime They Didn't Commit" which was eventually revealed to be a bank robbery in Hanoi, Vietnam. In truth, they had been ordered to do it, but the man who gave them the order was killed, and all evidence of his orders destroyed.
- In the fifth season premiere, they were cleared of that crime when a former Vietnamese colonel testified in their court-martial that their commanding officer sent them to rob a bank in order for them to be captured by the North Vietnamese. Of course, by that time they were being tried for the murder of their commanding officer, and the series ended before that could be resolved.
- The main theme in the Awake (2012) episode "Guilty".
- In Bangkok Hilton, Kat is arrested in Bangkok on drug trafficking charges, and despite the efforts of her father to track down her ex-boyfriend and expose him as a smuggler, she is found guilty and sentenced to death by machine gun. Thankfully, she manages to escape the prison before her execution.
- Batwoman (2019): Ryan was wrongfully convicted of drug-dealing, since the drugs she was carrying belonged to Angelique. Ryan took them in an attempt to get Angelique to clean up.
- Bones:
- In his first appearance, convicted murderer Howard Epps convinced the Jeffersonian he was innocent and they tried to find proof of it in time to stop his execution. They found proof he was guilty not only of the murder he was convicted for but also the murder of other people. The execution had to be delayed to investigate the other murders.
- "The Nail in the Coffin" revealed The Ghost Killer's first murder resulted in this trope, and the wrongly convicted man in question eventually snapped and went on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against both her and the corrupt judge who convicted him.
- Boston Legal: Alan Shore went to Texas to prevent the execution of a mentally-retarded individual who was convinced he was guilty and needed to confess to avoid going to hell. Alan failed but got a Moral Victory as the man said he didn't remember doing the killing.
- Cobra Kai: Kreese is certainly not a nice guy, but what finally sends him to jail is a crime he didn't commit. He is falsely accused by the victim, who was actually in league (not entirely voluntarily) with the real perpetrator. By the time the truth comes out, though, he's committed a whole slew of other crimes in his attempt to break out of jail.
- Cold Case has several cases where people are wrongfully imprisoned and spend years in jail before the detectives uncover the truth. In quite a few of these cases, the guys got railroaded thanks to prejudice of some kind while the real murderer seemed perfectly respectable.
- A guy is exonerated after the other inmates murder him.
- The real killer in "Frank's Best" was the victim's son, who had anger issues; the apparent killer is an illegal immigrant.
- In "Thrill Kill", it was the mentally disturbed father of one of the victims; the blame was placed on two punk/outcast teenagers who were thought to have done it, as the title suggests, as a thrill killing.
- In "Death Penalty Final Appeal", it's one of the two movers who had moved the victim and her father into their new home; the other mover, who had a criminal record, was blamed and convicted and executed before his name could be cleared. Fortunately, they manage to catch the real killer and exonerate him posthumously and the corrupt D.A. who withheld the evidence is fired and disbarred.
- One episode had someone confess to cover for someone else he cared about. The detectives knew this but didn't have enough evidence to prove it.
- The Confessions of Frannie Langton: Frannie is convicted of one murder she didn't commit at all (which actually was a suicide) since evidence was fabricated. The other at most was probably manslaughter, with her being hanged for them both.
- The episode "Riding the Lightning" of Criminal Minds has the team suspect that a woman who was supposedly the accomplice of her serial killer husband and nearing execution is innocent of her son's murder (the only crime which she was actually charged with) ...but she doesn't seem very enthusiastic about the possibility of being cleared. It turns out that she is indeed innocent, but she doesn't want to be acquitted, because the only way to achieve that would be revealing that her son is alive and has a new identity. She believes that if that happened, the boy's knowledge of what a monster his biological father was would taint his whole life. Therefore, she lets herself die as well.
- The Family: Hank was wrongly convicted of murdering Adam because he was a registered sex offender who lived near him, and Willa planted one of Adam's ships in a bottle in his house.
- For Life: Aaron was wrongly convicted of being a drug kingpin due to circumstantial evidence and false witness testimony. He also helps other people who were victims of legal injustices.
- The Frankenstein Chronicles: John is wrongly convicted of Flora's murder at the end of the first season and sentenced to death. His lawyer doesn't help much, trying to have the charge dismissed on humane grounds rather than trying the insanity defense despite John suffering from neurosyphilis, making his guilt questionable even if he had done it. He's hanged, but it doesn't stick for long.
- The Fugitive:
- The original show revolved around Dr. Richard Kimble, who had been wrongfully blamed for the murder of his wife and imprisoned until he managed to escape and go on the run to search for the real killer, often helping the people he met before having to leave to avoid the cops hot on his tail. The 2000 remake had the same premise.
- In the 2020 remake though, Mike Ferro had been convicted on two counts of vehicular manslaughter for supposedly killing his brother and brother's girlfriend by getting into a drunken car crash. It turns out that he was actually asleep in the back with his brother driving, but as they're dead with supposed evidence which showed he'd been driving Mike takes a plea bargain, getting five years in prison instead of much longer. Though he isn't convicted of the bombing he's accused of and has to become the titular fugitive over, his prior conviction certainly does not help.
- One episode of Homicide: Life on the Street had a woman whose father was about to be executed for killing a man take Barnfather hostage and demand that the police stop her father's execution. The detectives eventually figure out that the father was innocent when the real murderer commits suicide and leaves a note confessing to the crime, resulting in the father getting a stay of execution.
- The I-Land: Chase was wrongly convicted of murdering her mother. Her husband is really who did it (not even intentionally). She's exonerated in the end and set free.
- The show In Justice revolved around clearing wrongfully convicted people. In episode 8, they fail to save a mentally disabled man from being executed because the judge feels that they don't yet have enough proof. It's sort of up in the air since the episode ended with the detective confronting the real murderer (as well as the fact that the rest of the team knows who the killer actually is and persuaded the guy's wife to retract her alibi, meaning that they could have gathered enough evidence to nail him to a wall offscreen).
- Innocent (UK) is all about this trope. Two series so far have had their protagonists having their convictions for murder quashed after new evidence comes to light, and the police having to reopen the original investigation to find the real killer, whilst the person wrongly convicted tries to rebuild their life.
- JAG:
- The episode "Secrets" revolves around an escaped prisoner trying to prove his innocence.
- In "Retrial", a sailor had unbeknownst to him hired a transsexual prostitute. When finding out, the sailor changed his mind and the prostitute threatens him with a knife. The sailor defends himself and accidentally stabs the prostitute and runs away in fear and shame. Not long thereafter, another man comes and viciously stabs the prostitute to death. The sailor is convicted for the murder, but only because the military prosecutor, presumably on purpose, didn't follow up on a lead from the local DA in order to further his own political ambitions as being "tough on crime".
- Crops up occasionally on Law & Order. Usually the wrongly convicted is either wholly unsympathetic (a white supremacist convicted of child murders that were actually committed by a mentally-ill black man) or turned out be connected after all (a man convicted of killing his wife turned out to have hired someone else to do it — he was convicted of murdering that man to cover this up). At least once, however, prosecutors did accidentally convict an innocent man, and found that their attempts to exonerate him were frustrated by their own successful prosecution, which, lacking any intentional impropriety or error, couldn't simply be reversed because they weren't sure the right man was convicted. A judge on appeal even tells them in effect "12 people looked at your evidence and said he was guilty, who am I to disagree?"
- Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
- In an episode aptly titled "Justice Denied", it is revealed that Olivia unintentionally helped to convict a man of a crime he did not commit. The man was the prime suspect in a brutal rape, and after hours of interrogation, Olivia caught him in an I Never Said It Was Poison statement. This and other circumstantial evidence are used to convict the man. Years later, she realizes (due to a paperwork error that was repeated in the man's confession) that the man was innocent and that she must have provided him with the incriminating information earlier during the interrogation and forgotten about it. The man is freed but lost years of his life, and the real rapist was free to rape many more women in the meantime.
- It happened to Stabler's mentor. The suspected rapist had served his sentence and was released, so when similar rapes start happening, the immediate assumption is that the rapist is up to his old tricks. However, Stabler expresses skepticism that their suspect, a mentally disabled man, was capable of a crime of that complexity. His mentor is initially dismissive, but when he learns that the suspect has an alibi for the most recent crime, he realizes that Stabler was right; the suspect in question had been innocent all along. They then find that while the innocent man was in prison, the killer had committed similar crimes in other states, counting on the different jurisdictions to keep the police from putting it together.
- In one episode, Stabler finds out that a man he put in prison for rape was innocent after a similar crime was committed while the accused rapist was in prison. He goes to visit the guy in prison to eat his crow, apologize, and tell him as soon as they can get the real rapist before a judge, he'd be released. But then the real rapist jumps (or possibly is pushed) out of a window, which means they can no longer prove the convicted man's innocence.
- A similar case occurs later in the same season, though the Downer Ending is averted when the man's lawyer violates privilege to implicate her recently-deceased client in the crime, allowing the other man to be exonerated.
- In season 15 episode "Dissonant Voices", a popular voice coach is framed as a pedophile by two of his ex-students for dropping them from his class. Despite his numerous protests that he wasn't a child molester, Benson refuses to believe him, even thinking that he was just trying to claim sympathy when he said he couldn't make bail. The Frame-Up is eventually exposed, but the damage has already been done: the coach's family has disowned him, his reputation has been destroyed, and he'll never have a job again. Even worse, the two students who framed him end up getting probation at most. The episode ends with the coach giving the SVU a vicious but well-deserved What the Hell, Hero? before storming away angrily, while Benson has one of her rare moments of being guilt-ridden over arresting an innocent man.
- One case had a mother convicted of her infant daughter's death by a biased judge, despite the possibility of a medical explanation. After the same judge messes up an SVU case based on the same biases, Casey looks into his background and finds out about the mother's conviction, which she promptly fights to overturn.
- Legend of the Seeker: In "Confession", fake memories are used to frame a man for murder into confessing to Kahlan, and he gets hanged for it. Another miscarriage is averted later when Richard and Kahlan figure out who really did it.
- Mr Bates vs The Post Office: Is Docudrama about a real case "Bates & Others v Post Office Ltd" which has been described in the press as "the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history". Over 700 former subpostmasters and subpostmistresses (franchisees who ran the Post Offices stores for them or had a contract with the post office to run post services in a store the person owned) were accused of false accounting or theft between 1999-2015. What was actually happening was faults in the Horizon computer system installed by the Post Office were creating false losses which were showing up in the accounts. The docudrama shows how the Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance (JFSA), led mostly by former subpostmaster Alan Bates managed to take the Post Office to court and eventually had some people's convictions overturned and the cover up by the Post Office Limited exposed (by the time of the broadcast of the series in January 2024 - 90 convictions had been quashed).
- The Murders:
- In "Never Kissed A Girl" the victim had been wrongly convicted of rape and murder, but released after he was exonerated. His murder turns out to be connected with the original case, and so the cops investigate both. The real killer killed him too, it turns out, when he learned what happened.
- "In My Feelings" has Kate's mom taken hostage by a man whom she put in prison for murder coming back after getting released for revenge, stating she used false evidence. She admits it's true, her husband had planted it but she wasn't aware at the time, failing to reveal this later so Kate wouldn't know what her father did. This is zigzagged as he later admits he'd killed his wife, although his conviction wasn't valid.
- Tony sent an innocent man to prison as revealed in the NCIS episode "Bounce".
- An early episode of NUMB3RS deals with this trope. Don responds to a crime that turns out to be identical to a previous case in which the suspect had taken a plea bargain. When they reexamine the case, they realize the evidence was a lot weaker than they had previously thought, but because the case didn't go to trial, the veracity of the evidence was never called into question. The real killer is identified when a connection between the victims is found, and the original suspect is released. (Compared to many victims of this trope, he ends up being relatively fortunate; he only serves a year before being exonerated.)
- Only Murders in the Building: Oscar was wrongly convicted of killing Zoe and did ten years in prison before he got released. After the true facts of her death come out, he's exonerated offscreen.
- Orange Is the New Black:
- Averted, interestingly. With a cast full of inmates, there's not a single one among them that has been shown to be actually innocent of what they were accused of (though some probably should have gone to therapy rather than prison).
- Played straight with Taystee at the end of season 6, who is wrongly convicted of murdering a guard, while he was actually killed accidentally by Friendly Fire, with other guards framing her to cover it up. She gets life without parole.
- In season 7, Suzanne is slow to accept that the judge and jury were wrong, and likewise realizes that she should be in a psychiatric facility rather than prison.
- A subplot in the Person of Interest episode "Identity Crisis" involved an innocent man sent to prison.
- Subverted in Porridge, lifer Blanco Webb was wrongly convicted in 1957 for killing his wife. Fletch manages to get him pardoned and he was released, but it turns out he is guilty of murder, just not the murder he was convicted of.Fletch: Listen, we all know that you didn't kill your old lady, see. Which means that some other bloke did. And you've paid the penance for it, right? But I don't want you going out there harbouring any thoughts of revenge, alright?
Blanco: No. I know 'im wot did it. It were the wife's lover. But don't worry, I shan't go round searching for him, 'e died years ago.
Fletch: Well, that's alright then...
Blanco: That I do know. It were me that killed him! - Surprisingly, one episode of Perry Masonnote entitled "The Case of the Drowning Duck" involved this. Years ago, the father of Perry's client was tried and executed for supposedly murdering his partner, and his family's name shunned. When another murder was committed, the town automatically thought it was the son. In the end, Perry managed to not only prove his client's innocence but posthumously clear his father's name by proving that both murders were committed by the first victim's wife.
- The Practice:
- Five years before DNA tests became available, Bobby Donnell defended an accused murderer who was forced by Kenneth Walsh to confess. Because Bobby believed his client to be guilty, the client had to wait ten years after DNA tests became available until an innocence program has the case reopened and the real culprit was revealed to be someone who had previously confessed out of remorse for seeing an innocent man being blamed but neither Bobby nor Walsh did anything about it. Out of remorse for not requesting the DNA test as soon as it became available then, Bobby agreed to help his client sue the State.
- In a later episode, police pick up two men in the wrong place at the wrong time for a cop shooting. They torture one into blaming the other, after which it's used to get the latter flipping on the first. In the end though, the prosecutor drops the murder charge and pleads it simply to a misdemeanor "illegal discharge of a firearm" as they realized it wouldn't hold up (still a miscarriage, but much less).
- Proven Innocent: The show centers around this, as main character Madeline Scott suffered being wrongly convicted for murdering her friend (along with her brother) and did ten years in prison. She now helps other people who have also been wrongly convicted to get exonerated as their lawyer.
- An innocent man spends 2 years and 8 months in prison in the Psych episode "True Grits".
- The Rockford Files. In the back story of the series, Jim Rockford was wrongly convicted of armed robbery and spent five years in prison before receiving a pardon.
- The 2003 adaptation of Sad Cypress (it's an episode, part of a TV series). Only the adaptation, though. In the novel, the innocent person is found innocent, which is much less dramatic.
- Smallville: Several years ago, back when Jonathan Kent's mother was pregnant with him, a man was wrongfully convicted for the murder of Lana Lang's Grandaunt. It was eventually revealed Sheriff Billy Tate, who later became Mayor William Tate, had asked Lachlan Luthor to kill a "drifter" (Jor-El) who was Tate's rival for her affections, but Luthor missed and killed her instead. Since Jor-El left no traces of his presence in Smallville, Tate needed another patsy. Clark dressed in clothes Jor-El left behind to pose as the drifter's ghost and scare a confession from Tate.
- Superman & Lois: Its eventually revealed in Season 3 that Lex Luthor has been in prison for over a decade for the murder of rival crimelord Boss Moxie. Lois and Clark eventually determine that Moxie was actually killed by his lieutenants Bruno and Peia Mannheim so they could take over Intergang. They feel morally obligated to get him released but at the same time they acknowledge that, while Luthor may have been framed for Moxie's murder, he got away with a lot of other terrible things and should be in prison.
- S.W.A.T. (2017): In Season 5 there's an arc where Deacon (who it turns out runs a prison Bible study group) meets an inmate he'd arrested years ago, who's been convicted of murder but maintains his innocence. Deacon, though not convinced at first, agrees to look into the man's alleged alibi. He becomes convinced that the man's innocent and works to reopen his case, with his wife Annie's help. It turns out they're right as the victim was killed by a woman whose husband had cheated with the victim, letting slip information that only the killer would know.
- The Tunnel: In Season 3, Elise finds out a man she had helped convict of murdering his son didn't do it... because they find the boy is alive. She's shaken by this, and wrestles with how they got it so wrong. We learn he was an alcoholic with a violent past whose story kept changing, which didn't help his case obviously.
- The Twilight Zone (1959): In "You Drive", Pete Radcliff is arrested for killing Timmy Danbers in the hit-and-run accident caused by his co-worker Oliver Pope as a witness named Muriel Hastings misidentified him. His alibi is that he was at home with his wife and children at the time of the accident. Pope is initially delighted both because he thinks that he has gotten away with it and because he dislikes Pete but his car eventually forces him to confess to his crime.
- The Twilight Zone (1985): In "The Convict's Piano", Ricky Frost was wrongfully convicted of the murder of his ex-girlfriend because her body was found in a car that had been stolen from him.
- This was the premise of one episode of The Twilight Zone (2002); a famous songwriter's life is revealed to be a fantasy created in response to him being accused of killing a cop, and being brutally interrogated while his numerous claims that he was innocent were ignored. In the end, he's beaten to the point that he's comatose, while the cop who did the beating claimed I Did What I Had to Do, only for another officer to come in saying that the actual shooter had just been picked up.
- In Unbelievable, protagonist Marie Adler is the victim of an attack by a Serial Rapist, but due to lack of evidence and the local police department perceiving Marie as unreliable, they suspect her of making a False Rape Accusation. This results in the police not only basically bullying her into recanting her report of the rape, they even charge her with filing a false report — something her public defender even notes is highly unusual for cases like this. Though said public defender is able to negotiate a (under the circumstances) favorable plea bargain with the prosecution — that means Marie faces probation, a fine, and an expungement of her record if she does not re-offend, instead of jail time and a permanent mark on her record — it still means that she is required to admit guilt and face official sanctions for a crime she didn't commit, while the grave one that she was actually a victim of is ignored. It is first when the rapist is caught for another crime and undeniable evidence that Marie did tell the truth all along is discovered that she receives some redress. Even worse is that it is all Based on a True Story.
- When They See Us: One of the most infamous American ones in recent years. Five innocent young men spent a decade in jail for something they didn't do, and because the real rapist didn't confess until the statute of limitations had expired, Tricia Meili (the jogger) never got proper justice on her behalf.
- One episode of Women's Murder Club featured a man who, seven years after being convicted for murder, would be executed for this. The case had a turn of events when the key witness is killed after sending an email admitting to having lied. It turns out the prosecutor was secretly dating the victim and was so sure the defendant was guilty that he blackmailed someone to give false testimony. In the end, the innocent was cleared, the murderer was caught and the prosecutor was arrested for tampering with the case. That case also featured Artistic License – Law; when a DNA test confirmed the witness was killed by the same person who killed the original victim, nobody used that alone to stop the execution. The killer had to be caught first.
