First Exoneration Based on Actual Innocence

ARLINGTON, VA, January 22, 2025: Today, the Office of the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Arlington County and the City of Falls Church’s Conviction Integrity Unit secured its first exoneration based on actual innocence.

In a 2023 robbery of a Safeway, the perpetrator gave a false name and stolen identification to the police, resulting in an innocent woman being convicted. When the innocent woman learned of this conviction during a routine background check, she alerted the Arlington County Police Department, who referred the case to the Commonwealth’s Attorney. After further investigation and reviewing of the footage from the crime, it was clear to our Office the wrong person was convicted.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Francis Webb and Director of Conviction Integrity Isabel Corngold filed a motion to vacate the conviction based on their investigation. Today, the General District Court of Arlington County granted that motion.

Highlighting this significant result, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti said, "Our jobs as prosecutors is to do justice. Correcting wrongful convictions are necessarily part of making sure that people are not punished for or suffer the collateral consequences of convictions for crimes they did not commit."

Ms. Dehghani-Tafti added, "I am grateful the County Board decided to fund the Conviction Integrity Unit last year, so we could hire an attorney experienced in these investigations and issues."

Ms. Dehghani-Tafti is the only elected prosecutor in the nation who is a former innocence protection attorney; she started the first and only Conviction Integrity Unit within the Commonwealth.

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Commonwealth's Attorney's Office

Cwa_info@arlingtonva.us
703-228-4410