Richard Anthony Jones spent 17 in prison in Kansas for a robbery he swore he didn't commit. So when fellow prisoners told Jones that there was another prisoner who looked exactly like him (and also shared the same first name), he passed the information on to his lawyers, the Kansas City Star reports.
About two years prior to his release, Jones had contacted the Midwest Innocence Project and the Paul E. Wilson Defender Project at the University of Kansas. That's when attorney Alice Craig got involved. After a bit of digging, his lawyers found his doppelganger, according to the Kansas City Star. On top of the fact that the man looked almost identical to Jones, his lawyers found out that the other guy lived near the area of the crime.