verb

• Show or declare that (someone) is not guilty of wrongdoing.

  ‘the article exculpated the mayor’

  More example sentences

  • ‘The right we say to be informed of distressing news, news of the death of a loved one, for example, does not exculpate the negligent driver in relation to the secondary consequences of his or her negligence.’
  • ‘It falls to this judge to search out and collect evidence, both that against the accused and the evidence exculpating him.’
  • ‘The mother in her evidence tried hard to exculpate the father from any responsibility.’
  • ‘There was however conflict of authority on whether the co-accused is able to use the confession as evidence of truth, for example where the confession exculpates him.’
  • ‘One of the striking features of both the first and second videos is the insistence with which [Child F] seeks to exculpate her, and the fact that she does so upon her own initiative.’
  • ‘Is there any precedent of people being exculpated even though they have admitted they are guilty?’
  • ‘Two so-called ‘impunity laws’ passed in 1986 and 1987 exculpated lower-ranking officers and imposed a definitive date, called ‘final point’, after which the criminals of the dirty war could not be tried.’
  • ‘Providing an explanation of behavior in terms of understandable epistemological conditions or causes subtly strives to exculpate the agent.’
  • ‘But, without exculpating him, his look of horror at the end of a husband-choosing elimination-dance is comprehensible.’
  • ‘‘No one arranged my speech,’ he said, as if exculpating his colleagues from what he was about to say.’
  • ‘This seemed to be an easy-to-resolve ambiguity, rather than anything that was going to exculpate anybody.’
  • ‘For the CIA to try to pull this off - and to claim that there was nothing in the cables to exculpate my client - was manifestly untrue.’
  • ‘An indictment is valid even if the grand jurors have no knowledge, in voting to indict, that evidence exists that would exculpate the defendant.’
  • ‘It is true that the personal and professional consequences for a doctor who is subject to civil proceedings may be severe, but why should the negligent be exculpated?’
  • ‘The Crown had to take that statement as a whole so that the version of facts that it contained at once implicated and tended to exculpate the appellant.’
  • ‘Yes, contrary to popular belief, often testing is used to exonerate or exculpate possible suspects rather than implicate.’
  • ‘Therefore it should not be possible for the director to exculpate himself by consent of the company.’
  • ‘He also said he had consented to broad FBI searches in an attempt to exculpate himself from any anthrax charges.’
  • ‘But, your Honour, even if you put that to the side, our argument is that we have been oppressed, because we have been held responsible for the costs of the case when what we did was to successfully exculpate ourselves.’

  Synonyms

  release, liberate, free, set free, let go, let out, allow to leave, let loose, set loose, turn loose