Taron Hill

About

From personal experience to public mission.

That's me in the photo: 18 years old, sitting in an orange jumpsuit at a table I didn't belong at, about to be sentenced to 60 years without parole for a double homicide I had nothing to do with.

My family knew the truth from day one. My own brother had admitted to the crime. But knowing isn't the same as proving, and proving isn't the same as being heard. It took 16 years before New Jersey's newly formed Statewide Conviction Review Unit took my case, and a judge finally agreed. On July 9, 2021, I walked out of a courtroom a free man, the first person that unit ever exonerated.

Sixteen years is a long time to measure in what you miss. It's every school play, every birthday, every ordinary Tuesday with my daughter, Justice, who grew from a baby into a young woman while I was gone. It's watching my mother get older through a visitation glass. It's a family that never stopped fighting for me, and never got an apology big enough to match what it cost them.

I built Xonorate because I know exactly what it feels like to be the person everyone assumes is guilty, and I know what it takes to change that: evidence, pressure, a family that won't quit, and someone willing to look twice. Xonorate exists to make that fight faster and less lonely for the next person going through it, and for the families standing behind them.

Outside of Xonorate, I build products that solve problems I run into myself, including Daddy's Promise, a book about a father's promise to his daughter, because the same instinct that drives the advocacy work (find what's broken, build the fix, ship it) applies everywhere.