Life or death? If you could decide which of these a criminal faced, what would you choose? Do you believe someone who causes a crime, such a homicide, deserves the death penalty or do you believe the death penalty is sinking as low as a criminal? Capital punishment can in some cases be good, however, in cases such as Damon Thibodeaux (LA), Robert Miller (OK), and Frank Lee Smith (FL). Their worlds were turned upside down by a pounding of a gavel. The government believes by issuing the death penalty they are protecting United States citizens from danger. However, not everyone is a criminal. Some are wrongly convicted. There have been over 300 inmates released from prison and death row because of the Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustices. It has helped save many lives, even if they were convicted years before. Damon Thibodeaux was charged with murder and aggravated rape of fourteen-year-old Chrystal Champagne in 1997 and sentenced to death. Chrystal was last seen on July 19, 1996. After not arriving home one time, her family, friends, and law enforcements began a frantic search for the girl. She was found the following evening along the levee in Bridge City. There was a piece of red extension cord around her neck and the right side of her head and face had been beaten. In addition, her shirt was pulled over her breasts and her shorts around her knees and ankles, suggesting a possible sexual assault. Thibodeaux was one of the many suspects in the murder of Chrystal Champagne. After hours of interrogation, he confessed to consensual and non-consensual sex with the victim. Then he admitted to beating and murdering the girl; however, his confession was inconsistent with the crime in many details. Thibodeaux confessed to strangling the girl with a white cord from his vehicle, which didn’t match the cord found around the victim’s neck. Also forensic examiners could find no evidence of semen in the victim’s body. That didn’t stop a detective from theorizing that a sexual assault could have occurred and that post-mortem maggot activity had consumed and degraded the evidence. Additionally, two eyewitnesses testified that they saw someone pacing near where the body was found and both selected Thibodeaux from a photo array and identified him in court. Following these proceedings, Thibodeaux was convicted and sentenced to death. In 2007, based on evidence of Thibodeaux’s innocence, the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office initiated a joint reinvestigation with the Innocence Project and the rest of Thibodeaux’s legal team, the parties conducted multiple rounds of DNA and forensic evidence testing from the crime scene and other physical evidence and interviewed numerous witnesses. The eyewitnesses who identified Thibodeaux as the man they had seen pacing near the crime scene had already seen Thibodeaux’s photo in the news media before taking part in the identification procedure. They revealed that the sighting had occurred the day after the body was found, when Thibodeaux was already in custody. After more DNA testing, it was found that Thibodeaux’s DNA did not connect him to the crime, he was released after serving 15 years in prison. He lived on death row for many years as an innocent man. His exoneration was on September 23, 2012. He is not the only one who lived on death row for many years. Another man, Robert Miller, lived on death row for 9.5 years for rape, murder, robbery, and attempted robbery. On September 3, 1986 an 83-year old women was found raped and murdered in her apartment in northwest Oklahoma City. The police had no leads on the case until four months later when they discovered another woman, 90-years old, raped and murdered. Blood, hair, and saliva was found in