The Indiana State Prison protest, which lasted 36 hours and ended on September 3, 1973, began when inmates took over three cell blocks and held three guards hostage. The inmates' demands were for improvements in food, medical treatment and conditions in isolation cells, as well as changes in personnel and policies at the prison and the appointment of an ombudsman to act as an intermediary between inmates and prison officials.

Source: “3 Hostages Freed at Indiana Prison.” The New York Times, September 4, 1973, 18. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/09/04/archives/3-hostages-freed-at-indiana-prison-order-restored-in-3-seized.html.

Freddie Lee Pitts and Wilbert Lee, twice convicted of murder and sentenced to death, were pardoned in 1975 nine years after another man confessed to the crime. Pitts and Lee, the latter an Army private on leave, along with a group of other people, had stopped at a Florida service station seeking to use the restroom. The service station was segregated and refused the Black men access to the restroom. Pitts and Lee argued with the white attendants, and three days later the white attendants were found dead. The woman who had been traveling with them accused Pitts and another soldier of the murder, but when the Army provided that soldier with an alibi, she accused Lee in his place. Police beat Pitts and Lee until they confessed, and then pled guilty at their lawyer's suggestion. Three years later, another man, Curtis Adams, Jr., was convicted of a similar murder and told his cellmate that he'd also committed the murders that Pitts and Lee had been convicted of.

This new information became public due to Gene Miller's investigative reporting, and Pitts and Lee moved for a new trial. In 1972, Pitts and Lee were again sentenced to death for murder, because Adams' confession was inadmissible in court due to his refusal to repeat it under oath. The woman who accused Pitts and Lee of the murders later retracted her story, claiming police coercion. Governor Reubin Askew pardoned them in 1975 after ordering an investigation and determining that the men were innocent.

Source: “‘It's Over’ for 2 Wrongly Held 12 Years.” The New York Times, September 20, 1975, 1. https://www.nytimes.com/1975/09/20/archives/its-over-for-2-wrongly-held-12-years-its-over-for-two-men-wrongly.html.

Rubin "Hurricane" Carter (1937-2014) was a boxer who was twice tried and convicted alongside John Artis for the 1966 murder of three white people at the Lafayette Grill. Despite Carter and Artis not matching the description of the men who had committed the crime, nor had they been at the scene of the crime, they were convicted on the basis of witness testimony from two white men who were themselves engaging in attempted burglary in the area and who later confessed that they'd been pressured into falsely identifying Carter and Artis in exchange for leniency. Carter and Artis' convictions were overturned in 1976, but they were tried again the same year for the same crime when one of the witnesses recanted his recantation and prosecutors claimed that the killings were racial revenge for a murder the same evening wherein a Black tavern owner was murdered by the white previous property owner. The second conviction was overturned in 1985. Carter served 19 years in prison under these sentences and had maintained his innocence throughout. In 2004, he founded Innocence International, an organization established to free wrongly convicted prisoners.

Source: “Rubin (Hurricane) Carter, Boxer Found Wrongly Convicted, Dies at 76.” The New York Times, April 20, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/21/sports/rubin-hurricane-carter-fearsome-boxer-dies-at-76.html