The maddening irrelevance of Charlie Vaughn's innocence

A quarter century later in 2015 advanced DNA testing definitively implicated one of the other three people convicted of the crime. That man then confessed. In his confession, he insisted that not only did he commit the crime alone, he barely knew Vaughn or the other two people who had been convicted.

The DNA did not implicate Vaughn or the others. In fact there was no physical evidence linking Vaughn to the crime.

Along with the confession and other new evidence, the DNA results would eventually free the other two people wrongly convicted for the murder. But not Charlie Vaughn. Despite strong evidence that his confession was coerced, and despite the fact that even the family of the victim wants him released, Vaughn remains in prison.