Convictions Undone: Four Cases Where the Evidence Gave Way, and What Each One Teaches a Florida Defense

Every case on this page comes from a record, not a news summary: an opinion, a judge’s findings, a prosecutor’s own release. That rule has caught something wrong in every case so far, in the direction of making the story sound cleaner than it was. A plea was called an exoneration. A date was off by three months. A man’s name was spelled two ways by the two offices that freed him. So this page is the version with the record attached, and it is organized by what actually happened to the conviction, because “overturned” covers four different things.

Four Kinds of Undone

Headlines say “overturned.” The record says one of four things, and a defendant reading about a case like theirs needs to know which. An exoneration is a conviction vacated and the charges dismissed, or a finding of innocence; the Missouri and Philadelphia cases below are that. A vacated conviction with the case still open means the State can retry, and sometimes says it will. A conviction vacated on a plea means the defendant traded a guilty plea to a lesser charge for release; that is what happened in Palm Beach, and it is not an exoneration, whatever the headline says. And evidence thrown out before trial, which is what the Florida breath cases are, undoes no conviction at all; it removes the State’s easiest proof and leaves the case to be tried on what is left. The Florida supply of the first kind is thin. The Florida supply of the last kind is where a defense lawyer actually works.

Case	What gave way	Disposition	Years
Florida Intoxilyzer 8000 repairs	Breath tube and O-ring replacements done by an agency that conceded it was not an authorized repair facility	Evidence excluded; about 950 Jacksonville cases under review	Pending cases
Philadelphia, 1997 murder	Medical examiner’s time of death, contradicted by three later pathologists	Vacated; charges dropped May 2026	28
Missouri, Sandra Hemme	Statements taken from a medicated psychiatric patient; undisclosed evidence pointing to a police officer	Vacated; charges dropped December 2024	43
Palm Beach County, 2010 murder	DNA testimony of “cannot be excluded” at 1 in 894 and 1 in 171; retest inconclusive	Vacated on a plea to a lesser charge; released September 2025	15

Florida: The Breath Machine Repair Nobody Was Allowed to Do

Florida’s breath testing program is run by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which certifies the Intoxilyzer 8000, inspects it, and writes the rules for it. The rules say a repair has to be done by an authorized repair facility. In its own 2015 rulemaking record, FDLE wrote itself out of that definition, saying the agency “only performs maintenance” and “does not perform repairs.” Then its inspectors kept replacing worn parts, including breath tubes and the small rubber O-rings inside the instrument.

In a Sarasota County DUI case, a county judge heard the evidence and ruled that replacing a breath tube is a repair, that it was not done by an authorized facility, and that the State therefore could not use the shortcut the statute gives it for a breath result from a compliant instrument. FDLE conceded on the record that it is not an authorized repair facility. In State v. Kilburn, No. 2D2024-0649 (Fla. 2d DCA Aug. 15, 2025), decided together with the Marano and Depauw petitions, Nos. 2D2024-0652 and 2D2024-0722, the Second District denied the State’s petition, holding that the trial court “did not depart from the essential requirements of the law in determining that replacing the breath tube constitutes a repair and that such repair was not done by an authorized repair facility,” and adding that “unauthorized repair is not a minor deviation from the Department’s rules.” The Second District’s decisions bind trial courts across the state where their own district has not ruled.

In August 2026 a three-judge panel of county judges in Duval County reached the same result on O-rings, after the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office acknowledged it had replaced them without records documenting the work. Local reporting put about 950 pending DUI cases under review by the State Attorney’s Office. Two limits go with this one. Nobody’s conviction was overturned; the rulings exclude the breath result from coming in the easy way, and the State can still lay a traditional scientific foundation or try the case on the video and the officer. And the rule changed on July 1, 2026, to put FDLE back inside the authorized-repair definition, so the argument reaches repairs made before that date. The firm’s page on breath machine repairs, O-rings, and the Kilburn ruling covers the records to demand and the dates that matter, and the breath test defense page covers the rest of the instrument.

Philadelphia: Twenty-Eight Years on a Time of Death

In 1997 a 73-year-old woman was killed in her North Philadelphia home. One witness said three men left her house on a Saturday night. Nobody saw the attack, and no physical evidence connected the men to it. What connected them was the medical examiner, who testified that she died that Saturday night, which put the men at the house at the right time. They were convicted in November 1998 and sentenced to mandatory life.

Years later other pathologists reviewed the same autopsy information. One put the death on Monday morning. Another put it late Sunday night and called Saturday “extremely unlikely.” The District Attorney’s conviction integrity unit retained its own expert, who disagreed with the trial testimony as well. Move the death by a day and the witness saw three men leave a house where nothing had happened yet. On May 26, 2026, a Philadelphia judge vacated the convictions and the District Attorney dropped the charges; two of the men walked out that day and the third the next morning. The District Attorney said they had been convicted “based upon the testimony of a medical examiner that we have every reason to believe was wrong.” More than 28 years had passed.

The lesson is narrower than “experts can be wrong.” A time-of-death opinion is an estimate built from body temperature, rigor, lividity, stomach contents, and the environment, and each of those inputs has a range. When a case turns on a timeline, the defense needs the autopsy report and the scene data behind the opinion, not the opinion, and needs to ask what the window actually rests on. The firm’s page on medical and autopsy evidence starts there.

Missouri: A Confession From a Sedated Patient, and the Officer

Sandra Hemme was a psychiatric patient in 1980 when police questioned her about the murder of a library worker in St. Joseph, Missouri. Hospital records show she had been injected with an antipsychotic and a strong sedative shortly before questioning. Police questioned her at least nine times over about two weeks, and her account changed each time. She pleaded guilty in 1981, the plea was reversed, and she was convicted at a one-day retrial in 1985 and sentenced to life. The Innocence Project calls her the longest-known wrongly incarcerated woman in the country.

In June 2024 a Missouri circuit judge, after an evidentiary hearing, found her statements “inconsistent, contradicted by physical evidence and accounts of reliable, independent witnesses.” The judge also found what the jury never heard. Another suspect had been in the file from the start: a local police officer whose truck was seen at the scene, who tried to use the victim’s credit card, and in whose apartment the victim’s earrings were found and identified by her father. The judge found that the State had not disclosed the earring reports to the defense before trial. She was released in July 2024 after the Attorney General fought the release up to the state supreme court, the conviction was vacated by the Missouri Court of Appeals in October 2024, and in December 2024 the prosecutor declined to refile.

A confession feels like the end of a case, and juries treat it that way. The record here shows what has to be asked about every one: who asked, how many times, over how long, and what condition the person was in. Florida law lets a court suppress a statement that was not voluntary, and it lets a jury hear the circumstances under which it was taken. The firm’s page on the Fifth Amendment and Miranda covers both routes, and the withheld-evidence half of the case is why Brady material is demanded by name rather than assumed.

Palm Beach: “Cannot Be Excluded” Is Not a Match

A Palm Beach County man was convicted of murder in 2010 and sentenced to life. The DNA testimony at trial was that he “cannot” be excluded as a contributor to two samples, at reported odds of roughly 1 in 894 for one and 1 in 171 for the other. A true single-source match is reported in figures with many more zeros. Retesting years later came back inconclusive, and the State conceded the new results were newly discovered evidence. In Johnson v. State, No. 4D2024-1818 (Fla. 4th DCA Feb. 26, 2025), the Fourth District reversed the summary denial of his postconviction motion, holding that “the new test results are akin to a recantation of testimony; thus, an evidentiary hearing is needed,” citing Davis v. State, 26 So. 3d 519, 526 (Fla. 2009). A separate claim that the State had presented false testimony was affirmed as untimely.

Before the hearing, the State offered to vacate the murder conviction in exchange for a plea to a lesser charge. He accepted and was released on September 26, 2025, after about fifteen years. His clinic lawyers have said they wanted a full exoneration and did not get one. That is a real choice people in his position face, freedom now against a longer fight for a cleaner word, and the honest description of this case is that a Florida appellate court said the science had taken back what it told the jury, and the State then negotiated rather than retry. Anyone whose conviction rests on DNA should ask what the statistic actually was, because “cannot be excluded” and “matches” are different sentences with different numbers behind them. The firm’s pages on DNA and serology defense and postconviction relief cover the statistic and the motion.

The Pattern Across All Four

None of these cases came apart because a new witness appeared. They came apart because someone went back to a document that existed at the time of trial and read it against the testimony: FDLE’s own rulemaking record, the autopsy data behind a time of death, hospital injection records and an evidence report on a pair of earrings, and the statistical weight behind a DNA opinion. In every one, the thing that undid the conviction was a piece of the State’s own file. That is why the discovery demands in a serious case are specific, and why the answer to “the lab said so” or “the examiner said so” is always the same question: show me what it rests on.

What This Means If Your Conviction Rests on This Kind of Evidence

Florida’s vehicle for this is a motion under rule 3.850, and for newly discovered evidence it has to be filed within two years of when the evidence could have been found with due diligence, with narrow exceptions. The Palm Beach case shows what qualifies: a scientific result that contradicts what the jury heard, which the State conceded was newly discovered. The breath cases show the other route, a pretrial motion in a pending case, where the same records fight happens before anyone is convicted. If your case or a family member’s rests on a breath result from an instrument serviced before July 1, 2026, a time of death, a statement taken under medication or after hours of questioning, or a DNA figure you were never told, the record still exists and can be pulled. I handle DUI and criminal cases in Pinellas, Hillsborough, and Pasco, and the firm’s pages on postconviction relief and forensic science defense describe how each of those records is obtained and tested.

Common Questions

What is the difference between an overturned conviction and an exoneration?

An exoneration is a conviction vacated with the charges dismissed or a finding of innocence. A conviction can also be vacated with the case still open for retrial, or vacated as part of a plea to a lesser charge, which is a negotiated outcome and not an exoneration. Evidence suppressed before trial undoes no conviction at all; it removes proof from a pending case. News coverage uses “overturned” for all four.

Were Florida DUI convictions overturned because of Intoxilyzer O-rings?

No. The Florida rulings, including the Second District’s 2025 Kilburn decision and a 2026 Duval County panel ruling, excluded breath results in pending cases because parts were replaced by an agency that was not an authorized repair facility. About 950 pending Jacksonville cases were reported under review. The State can still try those cases on other evidence, and a rule change effective July 1, 2026 limits the argument to repairs made before that date.

How do you challenge a conviction in Florida based on new evidence?

By a motion under Florida Rule of Criminal Procedure 3.850, generally filed within two years of when the new evidence could have been discovered with due diligence. The evidence must be something that could not have been found earlier and that would probably produce an acquittal on retrial. In the Palm Beach case the Fourth District held that DNA retesting that contradicted the trial testimony was “akin to a recantation” and required an evidentiary hearing.

Can a confession be thrown out in Florida?

Yes. A statement that was not voluntary is inadmissible, and the circumstances of questioning, including the person’s medical condition, medication, the length and number of interviews, and what police told the person, are examined at a suppression hearing. Even when a statement is admitted, the jury hears those circumstances and decides how much weight the statement deserves.

Further Reading

1. State v. Kilburn, Nos. 2D2024-0649, 2D2024-0652, 2D2024-0722 (Fla. 2d DCA Aug. 15, 2025)
2. Hundreds of DUI cases under review after Breathalyzer ruling in Jacksonville, Jacksonville Today, September 2, 2026
3. District Attorney Larry Krasner Announces Exoneration of Three Co-Defendants for 1997 North Philadelphia Murder, Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, May 26, 2026
4. Sandra Hemme, Innocence Project case page, with the 2024 timeline
5. Johnson v. State, No. 4D2024-1818 (Fla. 4th DCA Feb. 26, 2025), Fourth District Court of Appeal
6. Miami Law Innocence Clinic Helps Client Walk Free After 18 Years, University of Miami School of Law, October 7, 2025

This post is general information about Florida law, not legal advice, and it does not create an attorney-client relationship. The decisions discussed are State v. Kilburn, Nos. 2D2024-0649, 2D2024-0652, and 2D2024-0722 (Fla. 2d DCA Aug. 15, 2025), Johnson v. State, No. 4D2024-1818 (Fla. 4th DCA Feb. 26, 2025), and Davis v. State, 26 So. 3d 519 (Fla. 2009); the Missouri and Pennsylvania facts are as stated in the court records, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s release, and the Innocence Project’s case page; the Jacksonville case count is as reported by Jacksonville Today. The Palm Beach conviction was vacated on a plea to a lesser charge and is not an exoneration. Every case turns on its own facts, and past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.