The Exonerated

About the show

The work combines first-person narrative with legal records to tell the stories of six former death row inmates: Delbert Tibbs, Kerry Max Cook, Gary Gauger, David Keaton, Robert Earl Hayes and Sunny Jacobs, and their paths to freedom. Tibbs, Cook, Gauger, Keaton, and Hayes were legally exonerated, while Jacobs took an Alford plea to a lesser charge and was freed on time served. In 2004, Hayes pleaded guilty to murdering a woman in New York in 1987. In 2022, DNA testing also proved his guilt of the murder in the woman in Florida, albeit he cannot be retried in that case as a result of double jeopardy. The production is performed as an anthology by 10 actors seated behind music stands. Their accounts of the freed convicts emphasize their lives after being sentenced to death, including much of the legal proceedings that gained their exoneration.