“No one really knows about the innocent, the people who are crying for help,” said Marvin Anderson, who was exonerated in
2001 after spending 15 years in prison and four years on parole for a crime he did not commit. “No one really knows about the exonerees, and that’s because the states do not want to admit there’s something wrong.”An afternoon full of dynamic speakers and an evening of jazz by exoneree Michael Austin drew between 60 and 80 people to the first Innocence Symposium held at W&M Law.
Anderson’s mother, Joan, said that Marvin was the 99th person exonerated since the introduction of DNA evidence. To date there have been 223 such exonerations in the United States, exposing a wide range of flaws in the American criminal justice system.
Olga Akselrod, a staff attorney at the Innocence Project, works on innocence cases involving DNA evidence. She said the most common causes of wrongful convictions are mistaken eyewitness identifications; limited, unreliable, or fraudulent science; false confessions; and informants who provide bad information. Akselrod said recent studies show that wrongful convictions comprise between 3 and 5 percent of all convictions in the U.S.
“If we were going to be getting on an airplane with a 3 to 5 percent chance of crashing, we’d be concerned,” she said. “And yet, that appears to be where our criminal justice system is.”
The wrongfully convicted come from all over the country, Akselrod said, including 10 exonerees in Virginia alone.
Margaret Edds, who retired from the Virginian-Pilot last year after 30-plus years in journalism, spoke about the infamous yet ongoing story of the Norfolk Four, a quartet of sailors whose lives have been devastated by convictions for a rape and murder they almost certainly did not commit. DNA evidence at the scene matches only Omar Abdul Ballard, who confessed to the crime and is serving two life sentences for it. But despite overwhelming evidence that Ballard acted alone, three of the Norfolk Four remain in prison and the lives of all four have been ruined.
Although four former Virginia attorneys general, dozens of attorneys and retired judges, and most recently, 30 FBI agents, have spoken out on behalf of the Norfolk Four, prosecutors maintain that Ballard acted with the sailors in raping and killing Michelle Moore-Bosko on July 8, 1997. Clemency petitions, filed in 2005 during the waning days of Gov. Mark Warner’s tenure, remain before Gov. Tim Kaine.
“For Kaine to join in the proclamation of the Norfolk Four’s innocence would cement an indictment of the criminal justice system,” Edds said. Still, Edds believes that as the governor enters his final year in office, he may be willing to spend the political capital necessary to free the four sailors. “It’s time for us now to deal with it and clean this up.”
State Senator Henry Marsh helped lead the charge in the General Assembly to pass a DNA exoneration bill in 2001, eliminating the need for executive clemency in some DNA cases.
“To me, the idea of an innocent person being in prison for a crime they didn’t commit is unthinkable,” Marsh said. “It’s bad enough being in prison for something you did do.”
Steven Benjamin, a Richmond attorney who serves on the Virginia Board of Forensic Science and the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission, spoke of the wide-scale DNA testing ordered by Gov. Warner in 2005. The former governor ordered that DNA evidence of thousands of Virginia prisoners be tested after a 2004 random sampling of 31 pieces of evidence exonerated two more of Virginia’s inmates. Benjamin said that the odds that two of the 31 random samples would result in exonerations were “absolutely staggering.”
Still, Benjamin said, three years after the testing was ordered, only 34 more samples have reportedly been tested, and the $1.4 million budgeted for the wide-scale testing is gone. Speaking for himself and only himself, Benjamin suggested that the private lab contracted to do the testing and the Virginia Board of Forensic Science share the blame for a project that has stalled without much public explanation.“We do not trust things that are done in secret,” he said. “If you are acting as if you have something to hide, then you must have something to hide. We have got to return to the accurate and reliable determination of the truth. We should not be afraid of the truth.”
Concluding the day of speakers was Bernie Henderson, a senior deputy in the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth. He explained Virginia’s policies on executive clemency, which derive from the English common law, are mostly unwritten, and can change depending on who sits in the governor’s office.
Several exonerees and members of the Innocence Clinic at the University of Virginia attended the symposium.
Marvin Anderson, whose parents sat in the front row as he spoke, described his experiences both before and after his exoneration.
“You try not to focus on where you are, but on where you want to be,” he said. “No one knows exactly what a black hole looks like. But it’s a black hole with no bottom, when you know you did not commit a crime and no one believes you.”
Anderson, 44, said that the 2008 presidential election was his first opportunity to vote—26 years after his conviction and seven years after his exoneration. A certified welder and owner of a trucking company, he is attending night classes to become a firefighter, which he has wanted to do since he was a child.
“I am living my dream,” Anderson said.
If you have questions about the First Annual Innocence Symposium or would like to attend a viewing of the recorded event, please email wmsfip@gmail.com.
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