Danny Davis

Years served
32
Convicted in
Alexander
Freed
2024
Exonerated
2025
Danny Davis was 20 when he falsely confessed to a murder following many hours of psychological and physical abuse by police, including threats of the death penalty. DNA testing of evidence found under the victim’s fingernails proved his innocence. Danny was wrongfully imprisoned 32 years before a judge vacated his conviction. Exactly one year later, he was fully exonerated.

Danny Davis was exonerated in November 2025 after spending more than 32 years in prison for a murder DNA evidence proves he did not commit.

The First Judicial Circuit Court of Alexander County, Ill., dismissed murder charges against Danny one year to the day after he was released in 2024 when a judge vacated his convictions in the 1992 murder and robbery of a woman in Cairo, Ill. The woman was stabbed 38 times in her home, where she ran a small neighborhood store selling soda, snacks and cigarettes.

Abuse during interrogation leads to false confession

Days after the murder, police wanted to talk to Danny’s 17-year-old brother, Isaac, about the murder based on an unfounded tip. Officers took Isaac and 20-year-old Danny in for questioning. 

Danny endured many hours of psychological and physical abuse, including police threats that Isaac was going down for the crime. Police also threatened him with the death penalty, telling him, “Your Black a** [is] going to fry.” Fearing for their lives, Danny and Isaac each signed false confession statements implicating themselves and an acquaintance, DeVoe Johnson, in the crime. 

With his case going to trial just a few months later and facing the death penalty, Danny was pressured to plead guilty for a life sentence. When he entered his guilty plea before the judge, Danny said on the record, “I just want to live. That’s the only reason I’m pleading to it.”  He was sentenced to life without parole. Isaac also pleaded guilty.

DeVoe went to a bench trial, a trial that does not involve a jury and is conducted by the judge alone. The presiding judge was the same judge who accepted Danny’s and Isaac’s guilty pleas. The judge found DeVoe not guilty and acquitted him, finding that the confessions – remarkably, the same confessions at the center of Danny’s and Issac’s convictions – were not credible.

DNA testing excludes Danny

In 2015, the Illinois Innocence Project and the Innocence Project in New York jointly took on Danny’s case, with the Exoneration Project later joining the team. In their post-conviction investigation, attorneys litigated for access to evidence for DNA testing and obtained information that had not been turned over to the defense during the original investigation, including critical witness statements and potential alternate suspects who were never investigated. Testing identified male DNA underneath the fingernails of the victim, who tried to fight off her attacker. Danny, Isaac and DeVoe were all excluded.

On November 12, 2024, after an evidentiary hearing where the evidence of Danny’s innocence was presented, the court vacated the convictions and ordered his release. Then 52 years old, Danny walked out of prison after more than three decades of wrongful incarceration and reunited with his family, including his brother Isaac, who had been released previously from prison. On his car ride home last year, Danny shared that he hopes other wrongly convicted people will see him and know to keep fighting. 

Danny is represented by Legal Director Lauren Kaeseberg and Senior Staff Attorney Maria de Arteaga; Exoneration Project attorneys Lauren Myerscough-Mueller and Karl Leonard; and Innocence Project Attorney Vanessa Potkin. IIP Senior Staff Investigator Lynn Bagley conducted critical investigation. 

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