Caramad Conley was born in Oakland, CA. He is the second to youngest of nine children. His parents would later move him and his other nine siblings to San Francisco, CA in the Bayview Hunters-Point district. 

 

When he graduated from high school in 1989, he looked forward to getting a good job or, like his father and several of his family members before him, had ambitions of joining the military. Instead, Conley would soon be accused, arrested and charged with several gang-affiliated murders, attempted murders, and conspiracy to commit murders in what would be dubbed the Bayview-Hunters Point Massacres. He would subsequently be convicted of these crimes and sent to prison to serve 12 consecutive life-terms without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 26 years. 

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In December of 2010, after spending nearly two decades in nine maximum-security State prisons scattered throughout the State of California, a Superior Court Judge in a San Francisco courtroom would finally exonerate and overturn Conley's conviction when it came to light that the two leading legendary homicide inspectors who investigated his case, Earl P. Sanders, his partner Napolean Hendricks, and the famed SF prosecutor Alfred Giannini, had framed Conley by withholding crucial exculpatory evidence of his innocence, as well as paid off witnesses to lie against him during the trial.

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Conley was released in January of 2011. Since being released he has done numerous public speaking engagements at law schools, on criminal justice panels, at non-profit organizations, and a host of other places involving justice advocacy work. In addition, he founded and created a multimedia company, Lifted Clouds, LLC. With this platform, he seeks build public awareness and empathy for those affected by mass incarceration, and who are victims of wrongful convictions, by telling the stories of incarcerated people through feature films, documentaries, art, and book projects.