In 1985, twenty-four-year-old Byron Halsey was living in an apartment in Plainfield, New Jersey, with his girlfriend and her two young children. One night, while both adults were out, the children disappeared. The next morning, they were found in the building’s basement. They had been sexually assaulted and murdered. Police quickly zeroed in on Halsey.

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Over the next forty hours, officers interrogated him for more than thirty. They badgered him, ignored his attempts to explain himself, and used physical intimidation. They falsely told him he had failed a polygraph test and even fabricated evidence against him. Halsey—who had only a sixth-grade education and significant learning disabilities—eventually broke down.

Exhausted and overwhelmed, he signed a blank sheet of paper that officers later filled in with a confession.

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Three years later, at trial, that “confession” became the foundation of the case against him. With no direct evidence tying him to the crime, Halsey was convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.

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More than two decades later, in 2007, new DNA testing identified Halsey's former next-door neighbor, Clifton Hall, as the true perpetrator.  Hall was already serving time for multiple sexual assaults—crimes he had committed in 1991. He died in prison before he could be tried for the children's murders.

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By the time Halsey was exonerated, he had spent twenty-two years behind bars—three awaiting trial and nineteen after his conviction. He later estimated that more than half of that time was spent in solitary confinement.