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The removal of a burden, charge, responsibility, duty, or blame imposed by law. The right of a party who is secondarily liable for a debt, such as a surety, to be reimbursed by the party with primary liability for payment of an obligation that should have been paid by the first party.


noun absolution, absolution of a charge, acquittal, acquittance, act of indemnity, amnesty, bill of indemnity, clearance, clearing, discharge, dismissal of charges, dispensation, exculpation, excuse, forgiveness, freedom, freedom from accusation, freedom from guilt, freeing from blame, liberation, pardon, release, relief from, remission, reprieve, vindication, withdrawal of the charge
Associated concepts: exoneration clause in a will, exoneraaion of bail, pardon
See also: absolution, acquittal, amnesty, compurgation, condonation, discharge, dispensation, exception, excuse, innocence, justification, liberation, pardon, release, remission

EXONERATION. The taking off a burden or duty.

References in periodicals archive ?
201) Each new DNA exoneration gives clarity to the harsh reality that individuals are wrongfully convicted.
If justice reform has largely turned on innocence, what will happen to other worthy issues of reform in the criminal justice system if the number of DNA exonerations declines?
Gross, supra note 2, at 542; GARRETT, supra note 59, at 48, 89 (reporting that eyewitness misidentifications factored in 76% of DNA exoneration cases, and faulty forensic testimony or evidence in 74%).
166) Partially due to these procedural limitations, only five defendants have been posthumously exonerated since the first DNA exoneration of a live defendant in 1989.
Part VII asks whether a decline in the death penalty will lessen the intense desire that accompanies efforts to exonerate prisoners on death row, whether a potential decline in DNA exonerations will breed complacency, and whether the virtual impossibility of measuring large-scale decline of wrongful convictions will lessen the reformist zeal that animates the innocence movement.
However, the hearsay rules were drafted long before the advent of DNA exonerations brought to light the potential unreliability of police-generated evidence.
It is possible that there may be something unique about a DNA exoneration compared to a non-DNA exoneration.
85) For example, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck, the co-founders of the Innocence Project, began to argue in the earliest days of the DNA exonerations that a review function modeled on the National Transportation Safety Board was needed.
In tandem with DNA exonerations, and probably to some extent because of them, this same time period has also witnessed the exoneration of hundreds of additional prisoners as a result of witness recantations, the exposure of investigatory misconduct, and the like.
20) Amplified by this hubris, prior to the first DNA exoneration in 1989, "exonerations of falsely convicted defendants were seen as aberrational.