Tennessee Man Exonerated After 31 Years - Articles

All Content

Tennessee Man Exonerated After 31 Years

Posted by: Azya Thornton on Jan 24, 2025

The Tennessee Innocence Project (TIP), in partnership with the Innocence Project, successfully vacated the wrongful conviction of Scott Minton, who spent 31 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. The district attorney's office for Tennessee's 10th Judicial District on Jan. 23 dismissed all charges against Minton related to the 1994 aggravated rape, kidnapping and robbery of a woman. According to TIP, Minton's wrongful conviction resulted from tunnel vision, eyewitness misidentification — the leading contributor to wrongful convictions — and a false confession. Despite time-stamped receipts and 18 alibi witnesses proving he was in a different county at the time of the crime, Minton was convicted and spent over three decades in prison. "Exonerations like Scott's are why we do this work," says Jason Gichner, executive director of TIP. "They are a reminder of the resilience of the human spirit and the urgency of addressing wrongful convictions."