James Joseph Richardson

James Joseph Richardson is an African-American man who was convicted in 1968 for the October 1967 murders of his seven children. They died after eating a poisoned breakfast containing the organic phosphate pesticide parathion. At the time of the murders, Richardson was a migrant farm worker in Arcadia, Florida living with his wife Annie Mae Richardson and the children. At a trial in Fort Myers, Florida, an all-white jury found him guilty of murdering the children and sentenced him to death. As a result of the United States Supreme Court's 1972 Furman v. Georgia decision finding the death penalty unconstitutional, his sentence was reduced to life imprisonment; he was then exonerated in 1989, after 21 years, when his case was revisited by appointed Miami-Dade County prosecutor Janet Reno. He now lives in Wichita, Kansas.