Having lost 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction for rape and murder, Jeffrey Deskovic opted for the simple exuberance of karaoke to celebrate the master’s degree he earned late last month from John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “I enjoyed singing ‘Live to Tell,’ ” he says of his graduation visit to a loud and friendly bar.

“Too many things, not enough time,” says Mr. Deskovic, an unusual 39-year-old member in the growing category of “exonerees” — a word he loves — who have lived to tell their tales of bungled evidence, forced confessions and the deus ex machina of DNA. He eventually won millions in damages after Westchester police and prosecutors were officially excoriated for a “tunnel vision” investigation that mismanaged exculpatory evidence.

Far from luxuriating in his newfound freedom, Mr. Deskovic invested $1.5 million to create a foundation that searches out other wrongfully convicted inmates and helps them seek exoneration. “My new master’s degree lets me be part of the justice system’s old boys’ club,” he explains, his smile tinged with the wariness of prison years.

The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice helped track a crucial witness in one of the wrongful conviction cases lately bedeviling the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes. Mr. Deskovic, as focused as a hawk, is tracking 21 other Brooklyn convictions from his files of hundreds of prisoner petitions. He is openly skeptical of Mr. Hynes’s pledge to review some 50 murder cases involving a detective suspected of rigging witness statements and confessions. And he scoffs at a new reality TV show that romanticizes the work of Brooklyn prosecutors while drawing the ire of Hynes opponents who complain that the show amounts to free media puffery for the district attorney’s re-election campaign.