Justice does not end at exoneration. People coming home after a wrongful conviction deserve support as they heal, rebuild relationships, find community, and reclaim their lives. Teresa knows that firsthand.

This is bigger than one survey, one event, or one organization. There is a growing concern about national and out-of-state organizations coming into Michigan to collect the stories, experiences, trauma, and data of exonerees and their families, then taking that information back to institutions that benefit from it. The Organization of Exonerees believes it is time to establish a clear standard: Exonerees are not research subjects. We are not case studies. We are not data points. And our trauma is not a commodity. Our stories have value. Our experiences have value. The information shared by our families has value. Too often, directly impacted people are asked to reopen the most painful chapters of their lives while someone else builds research, secures grants, publishes reports, expands an organization, advances a career, or gains national recognition from what was collected. We need to start asking the most important question: Who benefits? Who owns the data? Who controls the stories? Who receives the funding? Who gets published? Who gets invited to present the findings? And what tangible investment comes back to the exonerees, families, and communities whose lives produced that knowledge? Putting words like “research,” “advocacy,” “amplification,” or “national campaign” around extraction does not automatically make it ethical. Research can be important. Data can move policy. Storytelling can change hearts and minds. OOE understands that better than most because storytelling, education, advocacy, and narrative control are central to how we build power and create change. But there is a difference between working with a community and extracting from one. Ethical engagement requires informed consent, transparency about funding, clarity about how information will be stored, shared, published, and used, and meaningful exoneree leadership in determining how our experiences are represented. It also means resources should flow back into the communities providing the knowledge. Michigan does not need organizations parachuting in to “give exonerees a voice.” Michigan exonerees already have voices. We have leaders. We have exoneree-led organizations. We have advocates who have spent years building trust, supporting families, advancing policy, educating institutions, and standing beside exonerees long after the researchers, cameras, and national attention are gone. We do not need to simply be studied. We need to be invested in. We do not need to simply answer the questions. We should help write them. We should be leading the research, shaping the methodology, interpreting the findings, controlling how our stories are represented, and determining what happens with the information our community provides. Our pain should never become somebody else’s product. Our trauma should never become somebody else’s fundraising strategy. Our stories should never create opportunities for everyone except the people who actually lived them. The standard moving forward is simple: If you want to work with Michigan’s exoneree community, come prepared to work in genuine partnership with Michigan’s exoneree community. Not around us. Not through us. Not off us. With us. We know the value of our stories. We know the value of our data. We know the value of our lived experience. And most importantly, we know our worth. Nothing about us without us. -Ken Nixon Executive Director of OOE #HigherEducation #innocence #Exoneree #Exonerees #Wrongfullyconvicted #wrongfulconviction #organizaztionofexonerees #innocencenetwork @InnocenceNtwrk #freedom #Justice

LETS GO ROY #exonerees #Wrongfullyconvicted #college #leadership

Here's your #inspirational story for today. Few things are more rewarding than when an #exoneree starts taking steps to get their lives back on track. That will happen in a big way this fall for Roy Blackman as a student at Wayne State University. ow.ly/zkns50ZB5Oz

Leadership Nobody understands reentry after wrongful conviction like an exoneree who has already done it. So we do not just serve exonerees. We train them to lead, mentor, testify, run programs. Lived experience is a qualification. Who mentored you when it counted? #Exoneree

A man walks out after 20 years wrongfully convicted. No parole officer. No halfway house. No reentry plan. Just a door and a sidewalk. People released on parole get more support than the innocent do. Where is an exoneree supposed to sleep that first night? #WrongfulConviction

Lets go Kieth!

National Organization of Exonerees comes out to support Kevin Strickland kctv5.com/news/local_news/na…

Wonderful time at the Detroit NAACP’s annual Freedom Fund dinner—featuring keynote speaker Senator @ReverendWarnock. Especially great to see Ken Nixon honored for the incredible work he and the Organization of Exonerees do on behalf of wrongfully convicted individuals!

#Wrongfulconviction? We've got an app for that! A new app has been launched in conjunction with input from those who have been #exonerated to help those who are joining their ranks to manage the challenges ahead. startlandnews.com/2026/02/or…

A legal group fighting to free innocent prisoners avoided closure. Now the Midwest Innocence Project is hoping to grow | via @stlpublicradio stlpr.org/show/st-louis-on-t…

Lets make this right Lansing!!

Michigan Exoneree Crystal Mulherin Featured on the Detroit News talking about the horrible conditions within women's huron valley prison

Amazing Organization that needs support! Lets go MIP

@cooleylawschool's Innocence Project partnered with Alpena Community College to host, “The Impact of Wrongful Conviction: An Exoneree Panel Discussion.” The panel included (L-R), Marvin Cotton, Ken Nixon, Ann Garant, Eric Anderson, and Gilbert Poole. hubs.ly/Q02tyz6k0

Exoneree Kenneth Nixon, who was wrongfully convicted & spent 16 years behind bars, greets Gilbert Lee Poole, Jr. Poole was wrongly convicted of murder in 1989. His exoneration is the 1st announced from the Mich. AG's Conviction Integrity Unit. @KimCraig007WXYZ with more at 6.

Five women have died inside Michigan’s Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility since mid-May, exposing glaring health care neglect inside the state’s prisons. Crystal Mulherin spent years wrongfully incarcerated at the prison before being exonerated in 2024. Now she and other advocates are urging Michigan to investigate the women’s deaths and the prison’s conditions. “Today, I write on behalf of the women I left behind … The difference between the women who died there and me is that I survived long enough to tell the story,” Crystal, a member of nonprofit Organization of Exonerees, said in an op-ed in @detroitnews. “My wrongful conviction taught me that when the government exercises extraordinary power over human beings, the consequences of error can be irreversible. The state does not become less responsible for someone's life simply because that person has been convicted of a crime. In fact, incarceration increases the government's responsibility. When the state takes away someone's freedom, it also takes away her ability to protect herself, seek medical care, change her surroundings or simply walk away from danger. Prison should never become a death sentence.” bit.ly/4fMh3mk