UPDATES

Jeremy Barney’s wrongful conviction is currently in the hands of attorneys for the Connecticut Innocence Project. A true-crime novel about the case, Angela’s Story, is forthcoming. Further updates will be added to this site as they become available.

BRIEF CASE HISTORY

Early in 2004, in Sharon, Connecticut, seventeen-year-old Jeremy Barney was arraigned on charges that he had sexually assaulted three children in a neighborhood family.

Aside from the statements of the accusing family, however, no evidence indicated that Jeremy committed the crimes alleged. In fact, no evidence indicated that these events had even occurred. Police recovered no DNA or trace evidence from the crime scene. According to the State’s own forensic medical exams, the children evinced no injuries consistent with the claims of years of violence. Police and social services interviewed over 70 other young children who had routine contact with Jeremy, and none made a single allegation.

Later evidence showed the parents of the alleged victims were attempting to cover up incest in their home. Facing social-service and police investigation of the incest, the parents did the unthinkable: They concocted a story about how all three of their children had been raped by a neighbor. Not only did the parents lie in their affidavits to police, they also both fabricated and destroyed evidence during the course of the investigation.

Even after the prosecution realized they had been lied to and manipulated, however, they pushed forward with a wrongful case, including falsifying children’s forensic interviews, choosing to save their reputations rather than the futures of Jeremy Barney and the three other children involved.

Following court proceedings that lasted roughly an hour, presided over by a judge who would later leave his post in scandal, Jeremy was sentenced to maximum-security prison for twenty years. The children in the accusing family were left to grow up in an incestuous home under the watch of their criminal parents.

Jeremy was released from prison in October 2021, after serving more than 18 years — longer than he’d been alive prior to his arrest. Today, with his case in the hands of the CT Innocence Project, he is attempting to reclaim that life that was stolen from him.