"Innocent Men Set Free" - New Book by Kristen Mason and Matthew Daher

Kristen J. Mason, head attorney for Criminal Appeals Advocates’ California practice, has co-authored a new book about how the American criminal justice system convicts innocent people, and how hard it fights to keep them inside once it has. Innocent Men Set Free: Two Post-Conviction Lawyers Examine Stories of Injustice in the Law, written with Texas appeals attorney Matt Daher, is now available in paperback (ISBN 979-8-199015-19-6, Amazon link).

The book tells four true stories in full: a father in Texas, a teenager in East Los Angeles, a commuter in Brooklyn, and a former Coast Guard rescuer in Florida. Different decades, different crimes, the same patterns running underneath each one.

“Four innocent men. Four states. Decades stolen for crimes they never committed.”

Four Cases, One Set of Patterns

The four men in this book have almost nothing in common. They differ in race, age, education, criminal history, and the kind of crime each was accused of. What put them in prison does not differ at all. Mistaken eyewitnesses who were certain. Coercive plea deals. Court-appointed lawyers who declined to investigate. Forensic testimony, including early DNA evidence, that was overstated to juries who had no way to push back.

For California readers, the case closest to home is that of Humberto Duran, a 19-year-old convicted of an East Los Angeles gang murder he was not present for. He served 29 years. He was freed only after the sole eyewitness against him recanted and the District Attorney’s office conceded that his conviction could not stand.

“Most innocent people in prison never will be. This book is about closing that gap.”

What Actually Set These Men Free

One of the book’s hardest lessons is that the system rarely corrects itself. Direct appeals were affirmed. Post-conviction motions were denied, sometimes for years. What finally undid these convictions came from the outside: a minister with a typewriter, a woman from a man’s past who paid investigators out of her own savings, a law-school investigator who found a recanting witness on Facebook, and an attorney who heard an old case described on a podcast and decided to look into it.

That is why the book is written for the people who can actually make that difference. Alongside the four stories, Kristen and Matt lay out, in plain language, the post-conviction tools that families can use to fight a wrongful conviction, from direct appeal through state and federal habeas corpus, and the reforms that would have changed these four outcomes.

Who Should Read It

Innocent Men Set Free is written for incarcerated people, for the families fighting for them from the outside, and for anyone who wants an honest account of how wrongful convictions happen and how, on rare occasions, they are undone. It is drawn entirely from the public record: trial transcripts, appellate opinions, district attorney press releases, conviction-review reports, the National Registry of Exonerations, and local news coverage.

About Kristen J. Mason

Kristen J. Mason heads CAA’s California practice and handles direct appeals, habeas corpus petitions, and post-conviction relief in state and federal court. She has been recognized as a Super Lawyers Rising Star from 2024 through 2026, and she is also the author of Unlocked: How California’s New Laws Are Giving Inmates a Second Chance. Her practice focuses on California’s evolving sentencing and conviction-review laws, including direct appeals, writs of habeas corpus, SB 1437, AB 333, SB 483, and the California Racial Justice Act.

Innocent Men Set Free is available now for purchase at Amazon.com. For a consultation on a criminal appeal or post-conviction case, contact Ms. Mason at (424) 377-0235.