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I have enough information to write a comprehensive brief.This episode recounts the wrongful conviction of Kevin Lee Green, a U.S. Marine, who was convicted in 1980 in Orange County, California, for the 1979 attack on his pregnant wife, Diana Green (later known as Dianna D'Aiello), which caused the death of their unborn child. In 1980, Kevin Green was wrongly convicted of a murder and an attempted murder he did not commit. He was later exonerated in 1996. The real perpetrator was later identified as Gerald Parker, a fellow former Marine and serial rapist-murderer dubbed the "Bedroom Basher," who had committed a string of similar rape-murders in Orange County from 1978–1979.
In June 1996 Green was informed that Marine Sergeant Gerald Parker had confessed to the crimes Green had been convicted of, and that his confession was corroborated by DNA testing of crime scene evidence unavailable at the time of Green's trial that matched Parker's DNA profile. Green filed a writ of habeas corpus based on the new evidence which was granted, and he was released after 16 years of incarceration. On June 20, 1996, Judge Robert Fitzgerald granted Green's habeas corpus petition, declaring him factually innocent of all charges and ordering his immediate release from prison. He was later compensated by the state: the law was amended and Green was awarded $620,000 in October 1999 by California's legislature for his 16 years of wrongful imprisonment. Gerald Parker was tried separately and was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to death in 1999 for the murders of five women, plus the assault on Diana Green. The defendant's automatic death penalty appeal followed a jury recommendation of the death penalty on Oct. 20, 1998, and on Jan. 21, 1999, Judge Frank Briseno sentenced Parker to death.
The case has drawn substantial ongoing attention. Green has become a prominent advocate for wrongful-conviction reform, appearing on shows like "20/20" and "Montel Williams", and "Inside Edition," "On The Case With Paula Zahn," Court TV, the Discovery Channel, and the Learning Channel. The case has also been revisited more recently by the popular *Crime Junkie* podcast in an episode titled "Survived: Dianna D'Aiello," aired January 6, 2025. Parker's appeal also drew legal-press coverage when the California Supreme Court affirmed his death sentence in 2017.
Kevin Green, the man wrongly convicted, was fully exonerated and is not a "perpetrator." The actual perpetrator, Gerald Parker, remains on death row. As of recent reporting, Parker was sentenced to death in 1999 and as of 2026 is incarcerated at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. He is still alive — no execution has occurred; California has an active moratorium on carrying out executions, so Parker remains a condemned inmate awaiting execution rather than having been executed or having died on death row.