Forty-three cases. The process was the punishment.

Twenty-seven of the people below have a clemency petition pending with the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Two have already been pardoned. Nine have nothing to file, because there is no conviction left to forgive — they were acquitted, their charges were dismissed, or an appeals court threw the verdict out. One was never charged with anything.

Being cleared did not make any of them whole. Lucky Ott was acquitted before the jury finished deliberating, in a state he had never set foot in. He had already spent everything he owned defending himself. Nobody gives that back. Dr. Raj Bothra was denied bail nine times and held three and a half years before a jury cleared him. Mark Sorensen served all forty-two months, and then the Seventh Circuit ruled there had never been enough evidence to convict him.

That is what these forty-three cases have in common. Not a verdict — the government won some and lost others. What they share is the cost of being put through it. Where a claim is contested here, it is written as a claim. Nothing asks you to take anyone's word for it.