Ray Buckey

After seven years and roughly $15 million, the McMartin case became the longest and most expensive criminal trial in American history, and it produced zero convictions.

One defendant, Ray Buckey, spent five years in jail awaiting trial for crimes that, as most people now recognize, never happened.

McMartin wasn't unique.

Across the country, daycare workers and teachers were accused, tried, and in some cases convicted, on the strength of recovered memories and coached testimony, convictions that were later overturned one after another when the evidence failed.