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* ''Film/TheLifeOfEmileZola'' actually isn't strictly about the life of Emile Zola, but rather about one of the most notorious RealLife examples of this trope -- the Dreyfus Affair -- and Emile Zola's campaign on behalf of the unjustly imprisoned Alfred Dreyfus.
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* ''Film/TheLifeOfEmileZola'' actually isn't strictly about the life of Emile Zola, Creator/EmileZola, but rather about one of the most notorious RealLife examples of this trope -- the Dreyfus Affair -- and Emile Zola's campaign on behalf of the unjustly imprisoned Alfred Dreyfus.
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%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!
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[[MiscarriageOfJustice Miscarriages of Justice]] where an innocent person is falsely convicted of a crime in LiveActionFilms.
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* ''Film/AnInnocentMan'' (1989) starring Tom Selleck. Selleck's character is framed by [[DirtyCop Dirty Cops]] and jailed.
* In ''Film/AndJusticeForAll'' Jeff was arrested due to mistaken identity (he had the same name as a suspect), then [[FrameUp framed by other inmates]] for a prison guard's stabbing. Kirkland can't get him out due to the evidence clearing him [[AcquittedTooLate coming in too late]]. This leads Jeff to [[RageAgainstTheLegalSystem snap]], [[HostageSituation taking hostages]] after being [[PrisonRape gang-raped by fellow prisoners]] and is then shot dead by a police sniper.
* ''Film/TheArcher'': All of the camp girls have been sent there regardless of their crimes due to the owner Bob bribing a judge into doing so.
* ''Film/{{Atonement}}'', through Briony's mistake in believing Robbie raped someone as a result of what she'd seen briefly while it was dark.
* A unique example in ''Film/BeyondAReasonableDoubt.'' A newspaper publisher decides to test the system by [[FrameUp having himself framed]] for the murder of a woman. He intends to wait for the trial to nearly find him guilty before having a friend bring up the evidence to exonerate him. However, the friend is killed on his way to the courthouse and the evidence lost so the man is found guilty. His girlfriend is able to prove his innocence, only [[spoiler:for his wife to discover that he did indeed murder the woman, who was his first wife, and his execution is set to go on.]]
** The 2009 remake of ''Beyond a Reasonable Doubt'' plays it mostly the same, as reporter C.J. frames himself to prove a D.A. is corrupt and willing to put innocent people behind bars to pad his record. Again, the evidence is lost and C.J. is put in jail, but his girlfriend Crystal proves his innocence and the case is a mistrial. But then [[spoiler:Crystal realizes the murder victim was going to give away she was the "drug addict" from C.J.'s award-winning documentary, proving his career was a fraud. Crystal tells C.J. it was a good plan, as he couldn't be tried again... except it was a mistrial, not an acquittal, which means the police can arrest him all over again.]]
* This is the cause of the events of ''Film/TheChase1994''. After a bank robber who wears a clown outfit robs evades capture a random guy gets accused of the crime and railroaded through the courts on no evidence other than that he owns a clown outfit. Physical evidence that would have exonerated him is improperly ruled inadmissible. No wonder he breaks out and makes a run for Mexico.
* In ''Film/{{Chicago}}'', the one innocent inmate is the one who gets executed thanks to a LanguageBarrier. She can only speak Hungarian and no one bothers to get a translator.
* ''Film/DialMForMurder'', Margot is tried and found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. [[spoiler:But the police are really after her husband, and let her go in the end.]]
* In ''Film/DoubleJeopardy'', Ashley Judd's character is wrongly convicted of murdering her husband and spends several years in prison.
* ''Film/TheFugitive'' has Dr. Richard Kimble wrongly convicted of his wife's murder, after which he escapes to track down the real murderer, a one-armed man. This was later parodied in Creator/LeslieNielsen's ''Film/WrongfullyAccused''.
* John Coffey in ''Film/TheGreenMile'', who's wrongly convicted of raping and murdering two white girls. The main "evidence" was simply him being found holding their corpses crying. Because he was a very large black man however in the Deep South that was enough. It eventually turned out a fellow death row prisoner was the real culprit, but they couldn't prove this and Coffey didn't want to be saved, he's so distraught over the evils people do he'd rather die.
* In ''Film/TheHunt2012'', before going to authorities about the molestation accusations against the protagonist Lucas, the schoolteacher seeks the opinion of someone without a proper understanding of how to interrogate a child. Consequently, he leads little Klara's answers and produces false proof that is nonetheless taken for the truth. Had Klara been questioned by a qualified expert first, the wrongful PaedoHunt might have been avoided. Luckily, holes in the accusations ultimately spare Lucas from the charges, but the damage is already done.
* ''Film/InTheNameOfTheFather'' is based on the real story of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, who were accused of a pub bombing in London in the 1970s. The movie took some liberties with the story for dramatic purposes, but the facts are still the same: they were threatened and lied to in police custody to scare them into confessing, the trial was held in the same city as the bombing and ensured that the jury would be very willing to convict the Four (all were hippies and drug users), and the police ''specifically prevented two of the Four's alibi from being shown to ensure a conviction''. They were all released about 15 years later, but none of the police officers were found guilty of any crimes and one of the Maguire Seven died in prison.
* In ''Film/{{Inception}}'', Dom Cobb is on the run for apparently having murdered his wife Mal. [[spoiler:It turns out that Mal was insane and convinced that after having spent fifty years in a dreamworld, she was still dreaming and needed to wake up -- and the only way to "wake up" is to kill yourself. She tried to make Dom kill himself along with her by deliberately having herself declared sane by multiple psychiatrists, filing a letter stating she was afraid for her life with her attorney, and setting up a hotel room to look like a violent struggle had taken place in it before luring Dom into the room and killing herself.]] Dom didn't follow through with it, and the setup was convincing enough that he was forced to flee the country.
* ''Film/JustCause'': Bobby Earl Ferguson was accused of rape, and only got out after he had been driven mad from the torture, scandal, and castration his fellow inmates inflicted upon him. He decided to rape and murder a random girl in a crazy plot to get himself arrested and later exonerated so when he got out and immediately murdered the prosecutor who pushed the first case, everyone involved would thus be guilty of letting a real criminal go free to commit more murders. He manages to utterly succeed in the first and second parts.
* ''Film/JustMercy'' documents the real-life case of death row inmate Walter [=McMillian=], who was charged with the murder of a young white woman in TheDeepSouth. The evidence against [=McMillian=] is scant at best, with numerous witnesses stating he was at home at the time (and that the truck he drove going to and from the murder was stripped down for the repairs at the time), but the struggle comes from the fact that the corrupt police want to keep [=McMillian=] where he is as a scapegoat for their own failure to find the real killer (not helping [=McMillian=]'s case was that he was caught in an affair with a white woman prior to the murder, which put him on the police's radar).
* In ''Film/TheLastSeduction'': [[spoiler:[[ManipulativeBitch Bridget Gregory]] frames her lover for murdering her abusive husband, as well as raping her as part of a rape fantasy role-play. She destroys the last piece of evidence that could possibly get him acquitted, and his lawyer tells him that nothing seems to be in his favor]].
* ''Film/TheLifeOfEmileZola'' actually isn't strictly about the life of Emile Zola, but rather about one of the most notorious RealLife examples of this trope -- the Dreyfus Affair -- and Emile Zola's campaign on behalf of the unjustly imprisoned Alfred Dreyfus.
* ''Film/LongShot2017'', Juan Catalan was nearly convicted of the murder of Martha Puebla due to him fitting the description of the killer and it took footage of a baseball game from ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm'' to prove his innocence.
* The climax of ''Theatre/AManForAllSeasons'' turns upon one of these; [[TheCorruptible Richard Rich]] commits outright perjury against his former acquaintance, Sir [[IncorruptiblePurePureness Thomas More]], in exchange for an appointment as Attorney General for Wales. In the film version, when More figures out what has happened and why, we get this perfect example of GallowsHumour:
-->'''More''': Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... But for ''[[ComicallySmallBribe Wales]]''?
* ''Film/NoGodNoMaster'': The film closes on the wrongful convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti resulting from the anti-anarchist hysteria.
* ''Film/NoEscape1994'': The Father's followers believe he's wrongly convicted, and only was blamed for his wife's death over prejudice due to him being [[AgeGapRomance much older than her]]. He privately admits to Robbins though that in fact [[SubvertedTrope he'd murdered her]] and [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident passed it off]] (unsuccessfully) as suicide, [[TheAtoner expressing remorse]].
* In the loosely-based film adaption of the book with the same name, ''Film/TheRunningMan'', this happens: it kicks the plot off when the police officer protagonist Ben Richards gets wrongly accused of having committed a massacre among innocent civilians, and as punishment for the crime, is selected as a combatant for the titular BloodSport TV show. However, Richards tried to ''prevent'' the massacre and part of the plot is finding the evidence of this to give the real story to the public as well as bringing the corrupt officials behind it to justice.
* ''Film/TheShawshankRedemption'': The driving force of the plot is that Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover in the [[TheCorpseStopsHere misleading circumstantial evidence]] variant. It then becomes much worse when exculpatory evidence emerges and is destroyed by corrupt officials because Andy has been acting as the warden's accountant during his prison time and now [[HeKnowsTooMuch knows too much]] about his shady finances to be allowed to go free. [[spoiler:They ''murder'' a witness willing to testify that someone else committed the crime. He eventually escapes to Mexico rather than be legally exonerated.]]
* ''Film/SinCity'': Marv from "The Hard Goodbye" is put on death row and ultimately executed for murdering all the women Kevin and Cardinal Roark killed and ate. Though, to be fair, the list of victims also included all the people that Marv ''did'' kill, including the two villains in question. John Hartigan from "That Yellow Bastard" is wrongly imprisoned for eight years on false charges of raping Nancy Callahan, the 11-year-old girl who he saved from pedophile rapist and SerialKiller Junior Roark, whose father is a powerful and corrupt U.S. Senator. Both cases were due to extreme corruption, forged evidence, and confessions acquired by threats -- Marv confessed after his mother's life was threatened, and Hartigan when he thought that Nancy's life was in danger, and he was able to get out on parole if he did. (Even if he'd had ironclad proof of his innocence, he could still have readily been charged with excessive force for shooting Junior in the genitals ''after'' disarming him.)
* One of the most notorious RealLife examples in British history is dramatized in the film ''Film/TenRillingtonPlace''. An unfortunate man named Timothy Evans was hanged in 1950 for the murders of his wife and baby daughter. Three years after his execution, his landlord John Christie was discovered to be a SerialKiller responsible for the deaths of the wife, the daughter, and at least six other people. He was also the star witness against Evans, whose testimony greatly helped in getting the conviction. The scandal helped prompt the UK to abolish capital punishment.
* ''Film/TrueBeliever'': Shu Kai Kim was convicted of a murder he didn't commit [[spoiler:due to false evidence presented by the police and prosecutor]].
* ''Film/TrueCrime'': Frank Beechum was found guilty of murdering Amy Wilson, but he's innocent. All the evidence was [[NotWhatItLooksLike mistaken and or/misinterpreted]].
* ''Film/TheWeightOfWater'' portrays [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_H._F._Wagner Louis Wagner]] as innocent but found guilty of two murders because the real murderer testified he did it. She recants before he's hanged but the District Attorney refuses to reveal this and [[MoralEventHorizon lets him die.]]
* {{Subverted}} and PlayedForLaughs in ''Film/TheWrongGuy''. The main character stumbles upon the recently murdered body of his boss/father-in-law and, owing to an incredibly convoluted series of events coupled with his own stupidity, ends up apparently incriminating himself. Terrified that he's about to be subject to this trope, he goes on the run... except that the police already know who the real murderer is, have ample amounts of evidence against him, and subsequently [[ShaggyDogStory aren't interested in the main character in the slightest]].
----
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%% This page has been alphabetized. Please add new examples in the correct order. Thanks!
%%
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[[MiscarriageOfJustice Miscarriages of Justice]] where an innocent person is falsely convicted of a crime in LiveActionFilms.
----
* ''Film/AnInnocentMan'' (1989) starring Tom Selleck. Selleck's character is framed by [[DirtyCop Dirty Cops]] and jailed.
* In ''Film/AndJusticeForAll'' Jeff was arrested due to mistaken identity (he had the same name as a suspect), then [[FrameUp framed by other inmates]] for a prison guard's stabbing. Kirkland can't get him out due to the evidence clearing him [[AcquittedTooLate coming in too late]]. This leads Jeff to [[RageAgainstTheLegalSystem snap]], [[HostageSituation taking hostages]] after being [[PrisonRape gang-raped by fellow prisoners]] and is then shot dead by a police sniper.
* ''Film/TheArcher'': All of the camp girls have been sent there regardless of their crimes due to the owner Bob bribing a judge into doing so.
* ''Film/{{Atonement}}'', through Briony's mistake in believing Robbie raped someone as a result of what she'd seen briefly while it was dark.
* A unique example in ''Film/BeyondAReasonableDoubt.'' A newspaper publisher decides to test the system by [[FrameUp having himself framed]] for the murder of a woman. He intends to wait for the trial to nearly find him guilty before having a friend bring up the evidence to exonerate him. However, the friend is killed on his way to the courthouse and the evidence lost so the man is found guilty. His girlfriend is able to prove his innocence, only [[spoiler:for his wife to discover that he did indeed murder the woman, who was his first wife, and his execution is set to go on.]]
** The 2009 remake of ''Beyond a Reasonable Doubt'' plays it mostly the same, as reporter C.J. frames himself to prove a D.A. is corrupt and willing to put innocent people behind bars to pad his record. Again, the evidence is lost and C.J. is put in jail, but his girlfriend Crystal proves his innocence and the case is a mistrial. But then [[spoiler:Crystal realizes the murder victim was going to give away she was the "drug addict" from C.J.'s award-winning documentary, proving his career was a fraud. Crystal tells C.J. it was a good plan, as he couldn't be tried again... except it was a mistrial, not an acquittal, which means the police can arrest him all over again.]]
* This is the cause of the events of ''Film/TheChase1994''. After a bank robber who wears a clown outfit robs evades capture a random guy gets accused of the crime and railroaded through the courts on no evidence other than that he owns a clown outfit. Physical evidence that would have exonerated him is improperly ruled inadmissible. No wonder he breaks out and makes a run for Mexico.
* In ''Film/{{Chicago}}'', the one innocent inmate is the one who gets executed thanks to a LanguageBarrier. She can only speak Hungarian and no one bothers to get a translator.
* ''Film/DialMForMurder'', Margot is tried and found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. [[spoiler:But the police are really after her husband, and let her go in the end.]]
* In ''Film/DoubleJeopardy'', Ashley Judd's character is wrongly convicted of murdering her husband and spends several years in prison.
* ''Film/TheFugitive'' has Dr. Richard Kimble wrongly convicted of his wife's murder, after which he escapes to track down the real murderer, a one-armed man. This was later parodied in Creator/LeslieNielsen's ''Film/WrongfullyAccused''.
* John Coffey in ''Film/TheGreenMile'', who's wrongly convicted of raping and murdering two white girls. The main "evidence" was simply him being found holding their corpses crying. Because he was a very large black man however in the Deep South that was enough. It eventually turned out a fellow death row prisoner was the real culprit, but they couldn't prove this and Coffey didn't want to be saved, he's so distraught over the evils people do he'd rather die.
* In ''Film/TheHunt2012'', before going to authorities about the molestation accusations against the protagonist Lucas, the schoolteacher seeks the opinion of someone without a proper understanding of how to interrogate a child. Consequently, he leads little Klara's answers and produces false proof that is nonetheless taken for the truth. Had Klara been questioned by a qualified expert first, the wrongful PaedoHunt might have been avoided. Luckily, holes in the accusations ultimately spare Lucas from the charges, but the damage is already done.
* ''Film/InTheNameOfTheFather'' is based on the real story of the Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, who were accused of a pub bombing in London in the 1970s. The movie took some liberties with the story for dramatic purposes, but the facts are still the same: they were threatened and lied to in police custody to scare them into confessing, the trial was held in the same city as the bombing and ensured that the jury would be very willing to convict the Four (all were hippies and drug users), and the police ''specifically prevented two of the Four's alibi from being shown to ensure a conviction''. They were all released about 15 years later, but none of the police officers were found guilty of any crimes and one of the Maguire Seven died in prison.
* In ''Film/{{Inception}}'', Dom Cobb is on the run for apparently having murdered his wife Mal. [[spoiler:It turns out that Mal was insane and convinced that after having spent fifty years in a dreamworld, she was still dreaming and needed to wake up -- and the only way to "wake up" is to kill yourself. She tried to make Dom kill himself along with her by deliberately having herself declared sane by multiple psychiatrists, filing a letter stating she was afraid for her life with her attorney, and setting up a hotel room to look like a violent struggle had taken place in it before luring Dom into the room and killing herself.]] Dom didn't follow through with it, and the setup was convincing enough that he was forced to flee the country.
* ''Film/JustCause'': Bobby Earl Ferguson was accused of rape, and only got out after he had been driven mad from the torture, scandal, and castration his fellow inmates inflicted upon him. He decided to rape and murder a random girl in a crazy plot to get himself arrested and later exonerated so when he got out and immediately murdered the prosecutor who pushed the first case, everyone involved would thus be guilty of letting a real criminal go free to commit more murders. He manages to utterly succeed in the first and second parts.
* ''Film/JustMercy'' documents the real-life case of death row inmate Walter [=McMillian=], who was charged with the murder of a young white woman in TheDeepSouth. The evidence against [=McMillian=] is scant at best, with numerous witnesses stating he was at home at the time (and that the truck he drove going to and from the murder was stripped down for the repairs at the time), but the struggle comes from the fact that the corrupt police want to keep [=McMillian=] where he is as a scapegoat for their own failure to find the real killer (not helping [=McMillian=]'s case was that he was caught in an affair with a white woman prior to the murder, which put him on the police's radar).
* In ''Film/TheLastSeduction'': [[spoiler:[[ManipulativeBitch Bridget Gregory]] frames her lover for murdering her abusive husband, as well as raping her as part of a rape fantasy role-play. She destroys the last piece of evidence that could possibly get him acquitted, and his lawyer tells him that nothing seems to be in his favor]].
* ''Film/TheLifeOfEmileZola'' actually isn't strictly about the life of Emile Zola, but rather about one of the most notorious RealLife examples of this trope -- the Dreyfus Affair -- and Emile Zola's campaign on behalf of the unjustly imprisoned Alfred Dreyfus.
* ''Film/LongShot2017'', Juan Catalan was nearly convicted of the murder of Martha Puebla due to him fitting the description of the killer and it took footage of a baseball game from ''Series/CurbYourEnthusiasm'' to prove his innocence.
* The climax of ''Theatre/AManForAllSeasons'' turns upon one of these; [[TheCorruptible Richard Rich]] commits outright perjury against his former acquaintance, Sir [[IncorruptiblePurePureness Thomas More]], in exchange for an appointment as Attorney General for Wales. In the film version, when More figures out what has happened and why, we get this perfect example of GallowsHumour:
-->'''More''': Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... But for ''[[ComicallySmallBribe Wales]]''?
* ''Film/NoGodNoMaster'': The film closes on the wrongful convictions of Sacco and Vanzetti resulting from the anti-anarchist hysteria.
* ''Film/NoEscape1994'': The Father's followers believe he's wrongly convicted, and only was blamed for his wife's death over prejudice due to him being [[AgeGapRomance much older than her]]. He privately admits to Robbins though that in fact [[SubvertedTrope he'd murdered her]] and [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident passed it off]] (unsuccessfully) as suicide, [[TheAtoner expressing remorse]].
* In the loosely-based film adaption of the book with the same name, ''Film/TheRunningMan'', this happens: it kicks the plot off when the police officer protagonist Ben Richards gets wrongly accused of having committed a massacre among innocent civilians, and as punishment for the crime, is selected as a combatant for the titular BloodSport TV show. However, Richards tried to ''prevent'' the massacre and part of the plot is finding the evidence of this to give the real story to the public as well as bringing the corrupt officials behind it to justice.
* ''Film/TheShawshankRedemption'': The driving force of the plot is that Andy Dufresne is wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover in the [[TheCorpseStopsHere misleading circumstantial evidence]] variant. It then becomes much worse when exculpatory evidence emerges and is destroyed by corrupt officials because Andy has been acting as the warden's accountant during his prison time and now [[HeKnowsTooMuch knows too much]] about his shady finances to be allowed to go free. [[spoiler:They ''murder'' a witness willing to testify that someone else committed the crime. He eventually escapes to Mexico rather than be legally exonerated.]]
* ''Film/SinCity'': Marv from "The Hard Goodbye" is put on death row and ultimately executed for murdering all the women Kevin and Cardinal Roark killed and ate. Though, to be fair, the list of victims also included all the people that Marv ''did'' kill, including the two villains in question. John Hartigan from "That Yellow Bastard" is wrongly imprisoned for eight years on false charges of raping Nancy Callahan, the 11-year-old girl who he saved from pedophile rapist and SerialKiller Junior Roark, whose father is a powerful and corrupt U.S. Senator. Both cases were due to extreme corruption, forged evidence, and confessions acquired by threats -- Marv confessed after his mother's life was threatened, and Hartigan when he thought that Nancy's life was in danger, and he was able to get out on parole if he did. (Even if he'd had ironclad proof of his innocence, he could still have readily been charged with excessive force for shooting Junior in the genitals ''after'' disarming him.)
* One of the most notorious RealLife examples in British history is dramatized in the film ''Film/TenRillingtonPlace''. An unfortunate man named Timothy Evans was hanged in 1950 for the murders of his wife and baby daughter. Three years after his execution, his landlord John Christie was discovered to be a SerialKiller responsible for the deaths of the wife, the daughter, and at least six other people. He was also the star witness against Evans, whose testimony greatly helped in getting the conviction. The scandal helped prompt the UK to abolish capital punishment.
* ''Film/TrueBeliever'': Shu Kai Kim was convicted of a murder he didn't commit [[spoiler:due to false evidence presented by the police and prosecutor]].
* ''Film/TrueCrime'': Frank Beechum was found guilty of murdering Amy Wilson, but he's innocent. All the evidence was [[NotWhatItLooksLike mistaken and or/misinterpreted]].
* ''Film/TheWeightOfWater'' portrays [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_H._F._Wagner Louis Wagner]] as innocent but found guilty of two murders because the real murderer testified he did it. She recants before he's hanged but the District Attorney refuses to reveal this and [[MoralEventHorizon lets him die.]]
* {{Subverted}} and PlayedForLaughs in ''Film/TheWrongGuy''. The main character stumbles upon the recently murdered body of his boss/father-in-law and, owing to an incredibly convoluted series of events coupled with his own stupidity, ends up apparently incriminating himself. Terrified that he's about to be subject to this trope, he goes on the run... except that the police already know who the real murderer is, have ample amounts of evidence against him, and subsequently [[ShaggyDogStory aren't interested in the main character in the slightest]].
----
