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#571 Guest Host Guest Host Ashley Fantz with Marvin Anderson · Wrongful Conviction

0:01
Speaker 1: On a Saturday afternoon in July of nineteen eighty two,
0:05
Speaker 1: a young woman was walking home in Ashland, Virginia, when
0:08
Speaker 1: she was approached by a man on a bicycle. He
0:11
Speaker 1: offered to walk her home. She said no and kept walking,
0:15
Speaker 1: but a few minutes later she saw the man again.
0:18
Speaker 1: He attacked her and dragged her to a secluded wooded area,
0:22
Speaker 1: then beat and raped her over and over. The woman
0:27
Speaker 1: later described her attacker to police as a light skinned
0:30
Speaker 1: black man with short, kinky hair. She also told them
0:34
Speaker 1: something he'd said while assaulting her that he had had
0:37
Speaker 1: quote other white girls. Officer Roy Anderson knew of only
0:42
Speaker 1: one black man in town with a white girlfriend, eighteen
0:46
Speaker 1: year old Marvin Anderson. When police picked Marvin up a
0:49
Speaker 1: few days later, he insisted he hadn't attacked that woman.
0:53
Speaker 1: He had an alibi, and his mother and girlfriend backed
0:57
Speaker 1: him up. But the victim picked out Marvin I'm a
1:00
Speaker 1: bunch of photos police presented to her, and she also
1:03
Speaker 1: identified him in a live lineup of other suspects. All
1:08
Speaker 1: of that sealed Marvin's fate with a jury who sent
1:11
Speaker 1: him to prison for an unbelievable two hundred and ten years.
1:16
Speaker 1: But this is Wrongful Conviction. Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction.
1:35
Speaker 1: I'm Ashley Fontce, sitting in for Jason Flahm. I'm an
1:38
Speaker 1: investigative reporter who's cover crime and police misconduct for decades.
1:43
Speaker 1: I've also reported extensively on police bungling rape investigations, and
1:48
Speaker 1: so I was very interested in this extraordinary and outrageous
1:54
Speaker 1: story you're about to hear. I'd love for you guys
1:56
Speaker 1: to introduce yourselves. Marvin, can you introduce yourself please?
2:01
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you for having me. My name is Marvin Anderson.
2:05
Speaker 2: I was born and raised in Hanover County, Virginia, and
2:08
Speaker 2: I spent fifteen years incarcerated and five years on parole
2:13
Speaker 2: for a crime and did not committee.
2:15
Speaker 1: Thanks Marvin. Vanessa can you introduce yourself please.
2:18
Speaker 3: My name is Vanessa Podcain. I'm the director of Special
2:21
Speaker 3: Litigation at the Innocence Project in New York City, and
2:26
Speaker 3: over the course of the past two decades, I've helped
2:30
Speaker 3: exonerate over forty people nationwide.
2:34
Speaker 1: That's extraordinary, Vanessa. Thank you. Marvin. I've never been to
2:37
Speaker 1: Hanover County. Take me back to your childhood in Hanover County.
2:43
Speaker 2: It was a close knit community and African American people.
2:46
Speaker 2: You know, everyone knew everyone. You know, my grandmother and
2:49
Speaker 2: my great grandmother, all of them and my cousins were
2:52
Speaker 2: all was you know, in the same community. And then
2:55
Speaker 2: of course my mom and dad. I have three sisters.
2:57
Speaker 2: I had one brother who had died in an accident
3:00
Speaker 2: car accident when I was incarcerated. We all was close.
3:04
Speaker 2: You know. We had a nice big yard, but we
3:05
Speaker 2: could run around and play. We had dogs, chickens. A
3:09
Speaker 2: lot of things that we did growing up was like,
3:12
Speaker 2: you know, playing sports.
3:14
Speaker 1: And what sport did you play?
3:15
Speaker 2: Marvin, baseball, football, basketball, softball, a little bit of everything.
3:20
Speaker 1: You know, what sport didn't you play?
3:22
Speaker 2: Marvin didn't play volleyball too much. I did run track,
3:27
Speaker 2: so it wasn't much that I didn't really do. And
3:31
Speaker 2: at the time I didn't live too far from a
3:34
Speaker 2: volunteer fire department, so I spent a lot of my
3:36
Speaker 2: time there. At the age of ten, I was always
3:40
Speaker 2: at the fire station, you know, doing something, washing trucks,
3:44
Speaker 2: watching the guys train. Not only was I learning something,
3:47
Speaker 2: but it was a means of keeping me out of trouble.
3:51
Speaker 2: So from that time I was able to join the
3:54
Speaker 2: fire service. At the age of thirteen. As a junior farreman,
3:58
Speaker 2: I was able to train. I was to receive the
4:01
Speaker 2: first set of five year I was able to ride
4:04
Speaker 2: the trucks, learn how to pump the trucks, basically do
4:08
Speaker 2: everything that a dart farmer would do. The only thing
4:11
Speaker 2: that I couldn't do was go into a burning building.
4:15
Speaker 1: What do you think drew you to want to be
4:17
Speaker 1: a firefighter? It's a very specific and demanding job.
4:22
Speaker 2: My mom, my dad, my grandparents. You know, they taught
4:25
Speaker 2: us if there's someone out there in need or help,
4:29
Speaker 2: always give help in hand, regardless what color they were.
4:33
Speaker 2: If you can help them, you help them. And for
4:36
Speaker 2: the fire service, that was for me was a way
4:39
Speaker 2: of helping people.
4:40
Speaker 1: The fire station. You had black people who worked there,
4:44
Speaker 1: white people who worked there, a mixture of different ethnicities.
4:48
Speaker 1: And what do you think that taught you as well?
4:51
Speaker 2: That we all are equal? Back then, racism existed, but
4:58
Speaker 2: I never really felt what it was until I got
5:02
Speaker 2: arrested for my crime. You know, most African American child
5:05
Speaker 2: to grow up knowing who they can be around. When
5:09
Speaker 2: it came to racism, I just knew people that didn't
5:14
Speaker 2: like my kind. But I knew to stay away from them.
5:18
Speaker 2: I've respected them, Whether they respected me, that was on them.
5:22
Speaker 1: According to census data, around fifty thousand people lived in
5:26
Speaker 1: Hanover County in the early eighties. Out of those, forty
5:30
Speaker 1: three thousand were white and less than seven thousand were black. So, Vanessa,
5:36
Speaker 1: I want to turn to you now. Can you tell
5:38
Speaker 1: us more about the racial climate in Hanover County at
5:41
Speaker 1: this time?
5:42
Speaker 3: Well, I think in general, it's important for people to understand,
5:45
Speaker 3: you know, we're talking about nineteen eighty two, and if
5:50
Speaker 3: we just go back twenty thirty years, we are in
5:54
Speaker 3: the fifties and the sixties Virginia, and we are in
5:58
Speaker 3: a period of racial segregation. This is before the Voting
6:02
Speaker 3: Writes Act, or just within a decade and a half
6:05
Speaker 3: of the assassination of Martin Luther King, and so it
6:10
Speaker 3: may seem like, you know, that's far in America's history.
6:14
Speaker 3: That was just a very brief period of time from
6:17
Speaker 3: when we're talking about you know, when Marvin was eighteen
6:20
Speaker 3: years old in Hanover, Virginia.
6:23
Speaker 2: You had certain parts of the town where there's mostly
6:26
Speaker 2: you know, African American people live in a certain part
6:29
Speaker 2: of the town where it just only white people lived
6:32
Speaker 2: at but I had to say this. I stood out
6:35
Speaker 2: in Nashville because during that time my fiance was a
6:40
Speaker 2: white woman, so that wasn't something that was well known
6:46
Speaker 2: or for most white people during that time to get
6:49
Speaker 2: used to seeing a black man with a white woman.
6:51
Speaker 2: Then look, they would give us. It would burn a
6:55
Speaker 2: hole through a wall. You know, how dare you? But
6:59
Speaker 2: as far as my people, it's just two people dating.
7:04
Speaker 2: They accepted it more than most white people did. So
7:08
Speaker 2: kind of kept my distance, but try to live a
7:10
Speaker 2: normal life as best as I could.
7:13
Speaker 1: So at this point, you're eighteen years old, You and
7:15
Speaker 1: your fiance have just moved from Richmond to Ashland, and
7:19
Speaker 1: you're about to pursue your dream of becoming a full
7:23
Speaker 1: fledged fireman. You must have felt like everything was going
7:26
Speaker 1: your way more than.
7:27
Speaker 2: The counter had just started the first fire program, Well
7:31
Speaker 2: you could become a professional fireman, and I had just
7:35
Speaker 2: signed up for it. It was supposed to start it that fall.
7:39
Speaker 1: And then on July seventeenth, nineteen eighty two, this incredibly
7:44
Speaker 1: horrific crime happened in Ashland. Vanessa, What do we know
7:48
Speaker 1: about what happened that day?
7:50
Speaker 3: The victim in this case was walking home. She was
7:54
Speaker 3: taking a shortcut through wooded area of rural over County
8:01
Speaker 3: and was approached by a man who rode up to
8:04
Speaker 3: her on a bicycle, threatened her with a gun, and
8:08
Speaker 3: proceeded to sexually assault her. And it was a very
8:12
Speaker 3: brutal attack that lasted over the course of a significant
8:17
Speaker 3: period of time, and when it was over, she was
8:21
Speaker 3: taken to the hospital, a rape kit was collected, her
8:25
Speaker 3: clothing was collected. The victim in this case was a
8:28
Speaker 3: white woman, and she described the assailant as a light
8:33
Speaker 3: skinned black man with a medium frame, short hair mustache,
8:38
Speaker 3: and there weren't a lot of clues as to who
8:42
Speaker 3: this person might be, but at some point she related
8:47
Speaker 3: that the man who attacked her said that he quote
8:51
Speaker 3: had a white girl, And so the officer started to think, hmm,
8:57
Speaker 3: who in town could it be that's black that we
9:01
Speaker 3: know that is in a relationship or involved with somebody
9:04
Speaker 3: who's white. And there was only one black man in
9:09
Speaker 3: town that the officer knew who was involved with a
9:13
Speaker 3: white woman, and that was Marvin Anderson.
9:18
Speaker 1: Marvin, Ashland was a pretty small, tight knit community, Like
9:21
Speaker 1: you said, at the time, did you hear anything about
9:25
Speaker 1: what had happened?
9:26
Speaker 2: The crime actually took place on a Saturday, and that
9:29
Speaker 2: Sunday I had a softball game, so some of the
9:34
Speaker 2: teammates of minds. They was talking about what had happened,
9:38
Speaker 2: and during that time, a few of my teammates knew
9:42
Speaker 2: the perpetrator that committed this crime.
9:44
Speaker 3: People knew about the crime itself because it had made
9:48
Speaker 3: the news. But I think you know what's so remarkable
9:51
Speaker 3: about Marvin's case is that from the beginning, the community
9:56
Speaker 3: was aware of who really had committed the crime.
10:00
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that more and who that person
10:03
Speaker 1: was a little bit later, but first, Marvin, can you
10:06
Speaker 1: tell us about the moment that you realized you were
10:09
Speaker 1: a suspect in the case.
10:11
Speaker 2: I was at work at the time. I worked at
10:13
Speaker 2: Kingsmain par of my amusement park, and one of my
10:17
Speaker 2: supervisors came down to my posts and said they needed
10:20
Speaker 2: to see me an administration. And when I entered a room,
10:24
Speaker 2: there was the officer that I knew, and I actually
10:26
Speaker 2: called him by his first name. I said, Hey, Roy,
10:28
Speaker 2: how you doing you know? And he didn't say anything.
10:32
Speaker 1: And this officer was someone you knew pretty well.
10:35
Speaker 2: Knew him so well that I've actually had eaten dinner
10:38
Speaker 2: at his dinner table with his kids. When I was
10:41
Speaker 2: growing up, Roy kids plays sports, so of course we
10:45
Speaker 2: met playing sports. So it wasn't like he didn't know me.
10:49
Speaker 2: He knew me.
10:50
Speaker 1: So these two officers, Roy Anderson and Marshall Bailey are
10:54
Speaker 1: questioning you.
10:55
Speaker 2: The other officer mostly did all the talking. And that's
10:58
Speaker 2: when he started to questioning about, you know, where was
11:01
Speaker 2: I at on the seventeenth of July around six thirty
11:03
Speaker 2: seven o'clock that afternoon. And I gave him my honest
11:06
Speaker 2: answer and I said, hey, I could have been anywhere,
11:08
Speaker 2: which is true. I could have been playing sports. I
11:10
Speaker 2: could have been at the fire station, you know, I
11:12
Speaker 2: just could have been anywhere. And he was asking about,
11:16
Speaker 2: you know, would you be willing to take a polograph test?
11:20
Speaker 2: And the course I agree to do.
11:21
Speaker 1: So, Marvin, throughout all of that experience where you're being questioned,
11:26
Speaker 1: you're cooperating with them. Did you ever think I should
11:31
Speaker 1: get a lawyer?
11:32
Speaker 2: No, you know, not once doing that entire question and
11:37
Speaker 2: even going down to the county lockup, did I think
11:41
Speaker 2: about a lawyer? You know, because I knew I didn't
11:44
Speaker 2: do what they said had happened.
11:47
Speaker 3: You know in cases like this, you know, you have Marvin,
11:51
Speaker 3: he's eighteen years old. They're law enforcement from his community.
11:54
Speaker 3: So they're people who you know, he's been raised to
11:57
Speaker 3: give a certain amount of deference to, and people that
12:01
Speaker 3: he knows, and they're coming at him from a perspective of,
12:05
Speaker 3: you know, we need your help in this investigation. And
12:07
Speaker 3: so he's not thinking that people are out to get
12:12
Speaker 3: him or that he is going to be railroaded for
12:15
Speaker 3: something that he didn't do. And we see this in
12:18
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction cases where people trust in the police, they
12:21
Speaker 3: trust in the system, they trust in the process, and
12:24
Speaker 3: are totally betrayed by it.
12:27
Speaker 1: Vanessa, what do we know about Royan Marshall's training at
12:31
Speaker 1: that time? Are they beat cops? How big was Ashlan
12:35
Speaker 1: Police Department?
12:36
Speaker 3: I don't really have the answers to that, but I
12:38
Speaker 3: think that it's helpful to contextualize that. You know, we're
12:43
Speaker 3: talking about very small towns, you know, a population of
12:49
Speaker 3: around seven thousand, eight thousand people, you know, and when
12:52
Speaker 3: you consider police forces in more rural areas, they're not
12:57
Speaker 3: really trained or have experience often times in handling serious crimes.
13:02
Speaker 3: And so when something like a rape or a murder
13:05
Speaker 3: happens a lot of times. We see in wrongful conviction
13:09
Speaker 3: cases that you have forces that just don't have the
13:11
Speaker 3: training or experience to really go about these more serious investigations.
13:16
Speaker 1: Right, So let's get back to that day. They didn't
13:20
Speaker 1: end up doing the polygraph test, but there was a
13:22
Speaker 1: photo array and a live lineup.
13:24
Speaker 2: And in front of thing about it. When I first
13:26
Speaker 2: walked into that room, I saw a picture, a photo
13:29
Speaker 2: of me in a photo and I knew I'd never
13:32
Speaker 2: been in trouble, so I was just curious, how did
13:35
Speaker 2: he get this photo of me? That photo was my
13:38
Speaker 2: job ID photo.
13:40
Speaker 3: His picture was the only color photograph among other black
13:44
Speaker 3: and white photographs that were mug shots, and so it's
13:47
Speaker 3: a standout. While it's a photo array that has many choices,
13:51
Speaker 3: in reality, because of the suggestiveness, there's only one right
13:54
Speaker 3: choice of who the suspect is, and once that identification
13:58
Speaker 3: was made from the photo ray, he's then put in
14:02
Speaker 3: an in person lineup. And what's so problematic about this
14:06
Speaker 3: is that he's the only person from the photo array
14:09
Speaker 3: who's repeated in the in person lineup, and so it's
14:13
Speaker 3: it's obvious who the suspect is when she sees the lineup,
14:18
Speaker 3: and this is referred to in cases as unconscious transference.
14:21
Speaker 3: You know, we don't know at this point is she
14:23
Speaker 3: recognizing Marvin from the lineup or from the incident.
14:29
Speaker 2: You know, my thought after the fact is that you know,
14:34
Speaker 2: if someone has shown you a photo of a person,
14:38
Speaker 2: regardless who that person may be, and within ten minutes
14:42
Speaker 2: you see that same person standing directly at front you,
14:45
Speaker 2: you're going to remember that phase of that photo. And
14:49
Speaker 2: that's what happened, Vanessa.
14:51
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the rape kit for a moment. Where
14:55
Speaker 1: was the rape kit tested and the significance of the zerology.
14:59
Speaker 1: Of course, this is a era before we get to DNA.
15:03
Speaker 3: At that time in sexual assault cases, the type of
15:07
Speaker 3: testing that was used was called ABO blood typing, and
15:11
Speaker 3: all it could do was include an individual among a
15:15
Speaker 3: large relatively large percentage of the population that could have
15:19
Speaker 3: been the source of biological evidence at a scene. So
15:22
Speaker 3: it was flight years far less precise than DNA testing.
15:26
Speaker 3: The victim in this case, after the sexual assault was
15:29
Speaker 3: taken to the hospital, a rape kit was collected, Zeman
15:32
Speaker 3: was recovered, and the evidence went to the Virginia Division
15:38
Speaker 3: of Forensic Sciences, which is the State Crime Laboratory for
15:42
Speaker 3: zerological testing, and an analyst there, Mary Jane Burton, did
15:47
Speaker 3: a forensic testing and that testing was unable to exclude
15:52
Speaker 3: Marvin as the assailant.
15:54
Speaker 1: And just a note for everybody listening, remember that name
15:57
Speaker 1: Mary Jane Burton, because she'll be very important to this
16:01
Speaker 1: case later on. So then, Marvin, on January twentieth, you
16:06
Speaker 1: get arrested.
16:09
Speaker 2: Of course, they took their first mug shot of me,
16:12
Speaker 2: fingerprinted me, and read me my charges that I was
16:16
Speaker 2: charged with rap, satomy, robbery, introduction and I was locked
16:21
Speaker 2: up that night, and that's when everything happened that kind
16:27
Speaker 2: of destroyed my youth. By this time, the community is
16:41
Speaker 2: really talking about what happened. They got the wrong person,
16:44
Speaker 2: this who did it?
16:44
Speaker 3: And all this From the very beginning, the community knew
16:48
Speaker 3: because Otis Lincoln had stolen a bicycle earlier that day,
16:52
Speaker 3: and that was the bicycle that was used in the attack.
16:55
Speaker 2: One of the guys that paid on my team said, yeah,
16:58
Speaker 2: you know, Pop stole my bike. There was a name
17:01
Speaker 2: that they called him, Pop Lincoln. He was referring to
17:04
Speaker 2: stole his bicycle, went off in the direction of where
17:07
Speaker 2: the crime had taken place and.
17:09
Speaker 3: People immediately made this connection between Otis Lincoln and the crime,
17:13
Speaker 3: but of course it was too lat because police had
17:16
Speaker 3: already focused erroneously based on this suggestive identification on Marvin.
17:22
Speaker 2: So we went to my attorney and informed him what
17:27
Speaker 2: the community is saying. They're saying that this John Pop
17:29
Speaker 2: Lincoln is the person they committed this crime. And my
17:34
Speaker 2: attorney sais well, I knew him. I represented him some
17:37
Speaker 2: years ago on a temporary rape on a female. So
17:41
Speaker 2: at that time, I'm thinking to myself that hey, okay,
17:46
Speaker 2: I got someone that's on my side now, someone that
17:48
Speaker 2: knows this man is capable of doing these things. So
17:52
Speaker 2: we'd hired him and met with him several times, and
17:55
Speaker 2: each time we met with him, we was bringing him
17:58
Speaker 2: new information about what happened that day. You know, we
18:02
Speaker 2: brought in more witnesses that testify that I was at
18:06
Speaker 2: a certain place, certain time. One of the witnesses that
18:09
Speaker 2: testified in my behalf was that Lincoln said that day
18:13
Speaker 2: that if he found a white woman and if they
18:15
Speaker 2: didn't want to give him any he would take it.
18:18
Speaker 2: And it's just sad to say it, but that's what
18:20
Speaker 2: he did that day. So fast forward, we went to
18:25
Speaker 2: our first put him in their hearing, and the victim
18:29
Speaker 2: came in and she described her attacker as a very
18:33
Speaker 2: very light, skinny complexing person, straight, white teeth, short kink
18:36
Speaker 2: of hair, maybe one hundred and fifty pounds, maybe five
18:40
Speaker 2: sixty five seven. Okay, Well, as you can see me today,
18:45
Speaker 2: I am not very very light skinny complexing person. And
18:49
Speaker 2: at that time I worked at kingsmani amusement park out
18:52
Speaker 2: in the sun all day long, so there's no way
18:55
Speaker 2: I could be a light skinned complexing person. That's not me. However,
18:59
Speaker 2: the person and she described was Johna's Lincoln, but yet
19:04
Speaker 2: she identified me as her attacker.
19:07
Speaker 1: So the trial began in December of nineteen eighty two
19:10
Speaker 1: before Judge Richard Taylor. Your attorney was Donald White. Take
19:15
Speaker 1: us back to that day, Marvin, if you can.
19:17
Speaker 2: I'm sitting there, I had my family behind me, my mom, dad, grandparents,
19:22
Speaker 2: and I look over at my jury. You know, It's
19:26
Speaker 2: consisted of eight women, four men, all white, and I'm thinking,
19:31
Speaker 2: I'm going to prison. No matter what happens, I'm going
19:34
Speaker 2: to prison. So they come off turning. Then called the
19:40
Speaker 2: victim O Ones to stand to testify, and he asked
19:43
Speaker 2: you know what happened. She said. I was returning from
19:46
Speaker 2: a restaurant, had a bucket of chicken in my hand.
19:49
Speaker 2: This black person approached me on the bicycle. He asked
19:51
Speaker 2: her if he could walk me home, and I said no,
19:53
Speaker 2: I don't live too far. He proceeded up the path,
19:57
Speaker 2: and when I approached him for the second time, he's
20:00
Speaker 2: laying on the side holding his knee like he hurt himself.
20:04
Speaker 2: And when I stopped to assist him, that's when he
20:06
Speaker 2: grabbed me. He dragged me in the woods, beat me,
20:09
Speaker 2: raped me, and he told me that you know, I
20:12
Speaker 2: wasn't his first white woman, that he had a white
20:14
Speaker 2: girlfriend and all of that, and he dragged me further
20:17
Speaker 2: into the woods and he beat me and raped me again,
20:22
Speaker 2: and then he left me there. So when it came
20:25
Speaker 2: to my attorney to question her, you know, he basically
20:29
Speaker 2: asked the same question that the cor attorney did. What happened?
20:32
Speaker 2: Is the person that you know did this to you?
20:35
Speaker 2: In his courtroom? She said yes, once again, she identified
20:39
Speaker 2: me as her attacker. So I'm still looking at the jury,
20:44
Speaker 2: you know, and every time it was almost like every
20:46
Speaker 2: word that came out of her mouth, they knew she
20:49
Speaker 2: was telling the truth. No matter who my attorney put
20:52
Speaker 2: on the stand was testified, what was gonna be a lie.
20:56
Speaker 2: I had my fiance testified that I picked her up
20:59
Speaker 2: from work one time, I went to my mother's house
21:02
Speaker 2: and washed the car. Return home, We ate dinner, We
21:06
Speaker 2: watched Fantasy Islands and The Love Boat that night, and
21:09
Speaker 2: we went to bed. I had my mother neighbors testified
21:13
Speaker 2: that I was there washing the car. And not only that,
21:16
Speaker 2: I had the two witnesses that overWe heard John's Lincoln
21:20
Speaker 2: at the car wash saying what he would do to
21:23
Speaker 2: a white woman if they didn't want to give him
21:25
Speaker 2: any So I'm thinking all of this in my favor.
21:29
Speaker 2: And once my attorney put Lincoln on the stand to
21:32
Speaker 2: testify that somehow it would tricker her memory of what happened,
21:38
Speaker 2: just by seeing him and hearing his voice. Well, my
21:41
Speaker 2: attorney didn't do that. He did not put Lincoln on
21:44
Speaker 2: the stand. And when I heard the judge ask my
21:48
Speaker 2: attorney if you had any more further questions, he said no,
21:52
Speaker 2: you're hona. I turned to my attorney and go, hey,
21:54
Speaker 2: wait a minute, what about me? I want to testify?
21:57
Speaker 2: When am I gonna testify his words? Were, Oh, everything's good,
22:01
Speaker 2: we don't need you to testify. He refused to put
22:05
Speaker 2: make it on stand, nor did he put me on stand.
22:08
Speaker 1: Marvin. I can't even imagine how frustrating that was for you.
22:12
Speaker 1: Frustrating is just not really a strong enough word to
22:15
Speaker 1: capture that. But as you would learn many years later,
22:19
Speaker 1: your attorney had his own reasons for not calling Lincoln
22:23
Speaker 1: to testify.
22:24
Speaker 3: Donald White represented John Otis Lincoln in connection with another
22:30
Speaker 3: assault that Lincoln was accused of, and that was a
22:34
Speaker 3: conflict because Marvin's defense at his trial was I'm not
22:39
Speaker 3: the person who committed this crime. This crime was committed
22:42
Speaker 3: by someone else. That someone else was a mystery at
22:45
Speaker 3: the time of trial. But of course Donald White could
22:48
Speaker 3: have presented evidence that that person was John Otis Lincoln,
22:53
Speaker 3: and he chose not to.
22:55
Speaker 1: Wow, Vanessa, that is just unbelievable. Rather than disclose that
23:00
Speaker 1: he had a conflict of interest, which would have disqualified
23:03
Speaker 1: him as Marvin's attorney, Donald White just left John Otis
23:07
Speaker 1: Lincoln out of the trial totally. So pretty much all
23:12
Speaker 1: the jury had to go on was the victim's identification
23:15
Speaker 1: of you, Marvin.
23:17
Speaker 2: The jury went out for deliberation in about thirty to
23:20
Speaker 2: forty five minutes, came back guilty for two cancer rates, stotomy,
23:25
Speaker 2: robbery in aduction, and just ask them, do you have
23:29
Speaker 2: a recommendation for sentenzen They say yes, we'anna we do
23:32
Speaker 2: two hundred and ten years in prison. Everything in the
23:38
Speaker 2: courtroom went blank, went dark. I could hear everyone in
23:42
Speaker 2: the court room, but I couldn't see noone. My family
23:47
Speaker 2: were sitting directly behind me, and I turned around to
23:50
Speaker 2: look at my mom and dad, and I could not
23:52
Speaker 2: see them. It's like I had fell in a dark
23:56
Speaker 2: hole and there was no light anywhere. I could hear
24:01
Speaker 2: them talking to me, saying, you know, everything's gonna be
24:04
Speaker 2: all right. We're gonna get you out. I could feel
24:07
Speaker 2: that the officers putting sackles on round my wrists, round
24:10
Speaker 2: my waist and ran my ankles, but I couldn't see them.
24:13
Speaker 2: Everything was dark. That first week, I cried myself to
24:36
Speaker 2: sleep every night. I had no appetite, couldn't eat. After
24:42
Speaker 2: maybe four or five months later, that's when I was
24:44
Speaker 2: transferred to the state penitentiary. My first day in this
24:49
Speaker 2: state penitentiary, seven guys approached me in another nubie and
24:54
Speaker 2: they wanted to fight us all because he moved a
24:58
Speaker 2: jacket from out of his seat and put it on.
25:01
Speaker 2: I picked the table that was in the hall, and
25:04
Speaker 2: they wanted to fight us. You know. So my first
25:08
Speaker 2: day was basically preparing myself for what to come being
25:15
Speaker 2: in prison?
25:16
Speaker 1: Marvin, how did you survive? How did you protect yourself
25:20
Speaker 1: in there?
25:21
Speaker 2: You pick your friends wisely. The people's incarcerated. You can
25:26
Speaker 2: see who's trying to do better for themselves while they're there,
25:32
Speaker 2: and you just pick your friends wisely. One of my
25:35
Speaker 2: best friends that I met when I was there, I
25:39
Speaker 2: never asked him why he was incarcerated, why he was
25:41
Speaker 2: locked up, and he never asked me. But we became
25:44
Speaker 2: good friends, almost like brothers, and we kind of looked
25:48
Speaker 2: out for one another.
25:50
Speaker 1: And what about your fiance? Did she stay in your life.
25:53
Speaker 2: Doing my incarceration. I did married my fiance. We remained
25:58
Speaker 2: at married for over ten years. We mutually agreed to
26:02
Speaker 2: have a divorce because we both had discussed about having
26:06
Speaker 2: children before all this happened, and I was not going
26:10
Speaker 2: to deny her that privileged to be a mother, and
26:14
Speaker 2: we got a divorce. She did have a baby girl.
26:18
Speaker 2: She was still visit me when she came to visit me,
26:21
Speaker 2: she would bring her daughter.
26:23
Speaker 1: So you went to prison in nineteen eighty three, and
26:26
Speaker 1: then five years later, something pretty remarkable happened, Vanessa. Can
26:32
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about that.
26:34
Speaker 3: In nineteen eighty eight, Wenn at that time had been
26:38
Speaker 3: convicted and was in prison for another crime and decided
26:43
Speaker 3: to come forward and actually confessed to having been the
26:48
Speaker 3: actual assailant for the crime for which Marvin was wrongfully convicted,
26:53
Speaker 3: and he agreed to testify.
26:55
Speaker 1: Which he did at a state court hearing before the
26:58
Speaker 1: same judge as the first trial, Richard Taylor.
27:02
Speaker 3: And the judge said, I don't find him credible. I
27:04
Speaker 3: don't believe him, and dismiss the evidence. And Marvin stayed
27:08
Speaker 3: in prison for another nine years after that before his
27:13
Speaker 3: release on parole. And this is something that we've seen
27:15
Speaker 3: in other wrongful conviction cases, where there's the true perpetrator
27:19
Speaker 3: confesses and courts dismiss it until there's forensic evidence like
27:23
Speaker 3: DNA to corroborate it. The confession of the actual assailant
27:27
Speaker 3: is just not believed.
27:29
Speaker 1: So here we have another jaw dropping, unbelievable moment in
27:33
Speaker 1: this story, Vanessa, When did the Innocence Project get involved
27:37
Speaker 1: in Marvin's case.
27:39
Speaker 3: Marvin wrote to the Nisence Project in the early nineties.
27:43
Speaker 3: We took on his case in nineteen ninety four and
27:48
Speaker 3: for the next five six years looked for the evidence
27:53
Speaker 3: from his case.
27:54
Speaker 1: And did you have any idea what you were looking for?
27:57
Speaker 3: The Innocence Project was searching for the rape kit itself
28:02
Speaker 3: to subject to DNA testing, and we couldn't find it.
28:06
Speaker 3: D Nnison's Project is a law clinic at Cardozo School
28:09
Speaker 3: of Law, so there were many law students who worked
28:12
Speaker 3: on Marvin's case. They were calling police departments, court clerks,
28:15
Speaker 3: the lab. Nobody could find the kid. It was gone.
28:19
Speaker 3: And this is the worst circumstance that we could have
28:22
Speaker 3: at the Nisonce Project. When we take on a case
28:25
Speaker 3: for DNA testing, our goal is to find the evidence
28:28
Speaker 3: to test it, and so to not be able to
28:31
Speaker 3: find the evidence, and this happens in about twenty five
28:35
Speaker 3: percent of our cases at the Innocence Project. We never
28:37
Speaker 3: get to testing. We have to close out the case
28:39
Speaker 3: for all purposes. Marvin's case should have been closed, but
28:42
Speaker 3: we had a dogged law student on his case, Bridget Burns,
28:46
Speaker 3: and she wouldn't give up. She said, you know, you
28:49
Speaker 3: can't close it out. And so at that time, Peter Nufel,
28:54
Speaker 3: the Innocence Project co director, knew the head of the
28:57
Speaker 3: Virginia Division of Forensic SCI's Crime laboratory, and so as
29:02
Speaker 3: a last ditch effort, he called the director just to say, hey,
29:06
Speaker 3: could you pull the case file from storage and take
29:09
Speaker 3: a look and maybe there's some type of notation, some
29:12
Speaker 3: type of paperwork in the file that could help us
29:15
Speaker 3: figure out if this evidence still exists and where it is.
29:20
Speaker 3: So the director pulled the case file, opened up Marvin's
29:24
Speaker 3: file and made a startling discovery.
29:28
Speaker 1: And that brings us back to Mary Jane Burton, the
29:32
Speaker 1: forensic analyst who performed those original sorology tests back in
29:36
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty two. Mary Jane, it turns out, wasn't exactly
29:40
Speaker 1: doing things by the book.
29:42
Speaker 3: So Mary Jane Burton, when her testing was complete, to
29:45
Speaker 3: cut off some of the tips of cotton swabs containing
29:50
Speaker 3: the evidence that was collected during the rape examination and
29:54
Speaker 3: taped those cotton tip swabs inside of her notebook. And
29:59
Speaker 3: that evidence that was saved inside of her notebook went
30:03
Speaker 3: off to storage with closed cases and was in a
30:07
Speaker 3: box in a file room for years to come.
30:10
Speaker 1: And when you had those swaps tested, what did they
30:14
Speaker 1: tell you?
30:15
Speaker 3: The test results came back and demonstrated that he was
30:19
Speaker 3: absolutely innocent, and the DNA was run through the DNA
30:23
Speaker 3: database and there was a hit. There was a match
30:26
Speaker 3: in the convicted offender database, and the person at match
30:29
Speaker 3: was John Otis Lincoln, the person who everyone knew from
30:35
Speaker 3: the start and who had even confessed to being involved
30:38
Speaker 3: twenty years before.
30:40
Speaker 1: Marvin. You had been granted parole in nineteen ninety eight
30:43
Speaker 1: and released, So by this time you were out of prison,
30:47
Speaker 1: but you were still living under the shadow of a
30:49
Speaker 1: wrongful conviction. And now in two thousand and one, thanks
30:54
Speaker 1: to that DNA test, your name was finally cleared. So
30:58
Speaker 1: what came next for you?
31:01
Speaker 2: Well, I went through the fire academy, I graduated top
31:05
Speaker 2: of my class, and within a year or so, I
31:10
Speaker 2: became a lieutenant. Two three years down the road, moved
31:13
Speaker 2: up ranks again. I just retired maybe two years ago
31:16
Speaker 2: from being the chief of the very sane fire department
31:20
Speaker 2: that I had joined when I was thirteen years old.
31:22
Speaker 2: And I'm still heavily involved in the fire service out
31:25
Speaker 2: there in that county. But yeah, I was able to
31:28
Speaker 2: achieve a dream that I had becoming a professional fireman
31:33
Speaker 2: after I got my name clear.
31:36
Speaker 1: So thinking about that officer, Roy, was he still around
31:41
Speaker 1: when you were fully exonerated.
31:44
Speaker 2: Yes, he never spoke to me. I would see him,
31:48
Speaker 2: you know, in restaurants or at the gas stations, and
31:53
Speaker 2: if he saw me coming across the parking lot, he
31:56
Speaker 2: would walk the opposite direction. Maybe his conscience had been
31:59
Speaker 2: eating at it over there that period of time, but
32:03
Speaker 2: he would never speak to me, or apologize or acknowledge
32:06
Speaker 2: what happened between.
32:07
Speaker 1: Us, Vanessa, Were there any consequences for anyone, including that officer,
32:13
Speaker 1: for the way that this case was handled.
32:17
Speaker 3: No, And unfortunately that's not unusual in wrongful conviction cases.
32:23
Speaker 3: Almost never is anyone held accountable, not the officers that
32:27
Speaker 3: were involved, the prosecutors or defense attorneys. Like in this case.
32:32
Speaker 3: I mean, Marvin's defense attorney had an obvious conflict having
32:35
Speaker 3: represented the person who actually committed the crime and was
32:39
Speaker 3: the alternate suspect. I mean, that is a conflict. That
32:43
Speaker 3: evidence should have been presented to the jury, but it wasn't.
32:47
Speaker 1: You know, Vanessa, there's one thing that I do want
32:50
Speaker 1: to bring up here, Marvin's innocence case hinged on DNA testing,
32:54
Speaker 1: which wouldn't have been possible if Mary Jane Burton hadn't
32:58
Speaker 1: broken the rules at her job. In fact, her action
33:02
Speaker 1: of saving those samples has actually resulted in the exoneration
33:05
Speaker 1: of a dozen other wrongfully convicted men at this point,
33:08
Speaker 1: But there are other cases I believe where her playing
33:12
Speaker 1: fast and loose with policy may have caused some harm.
33:16
Speaker 1: So what should we think about Mary Jane Burton?
33:20
Speaker 3: Is she heroic? Is this visionary? Does that mean that
33:24
Speaker 3: there isn't any part of her work that could come
33:27
Speaker 3: under scrutiny? And so I think it's just, you know,
33:29
Speaker 3: an interesting thing about our society that doesn't see nuance
33:35
Speaker 3: or can't see that people can both do something great
33:38
Speaker 3: like save evidence that leads to the exoneration of many
33:42
Speaker 3: wrongfully convicted people, but also have flaws in her work
33:46
Speaker 3: at the same time, and it seems like those two
33:49
Speaker 3: truths might coexist.
33:53
Speaker 1: Thank you both Marvin and Vanessa for being here telling
33:57
Speaker 1: your story on wrongful conviction and what put a link
34:00
Speaker 1: to the Innocence Project in our bio in case our
34:02
Speaker 1: listeners want to help support the great work that they're doing.
34:07
Speaker 1: And now we've come to the part of the show
34:09
Speaker 1: that we call closing arguments. This is a chance for
34:12
Speaker 1: you both to say anything that's on your mind, whatever
34:15
Speaker 1: you'd like listeners to take away from your story.
34:19
Speaker 3: Towards the beginning, you would ask the questions about the
34:22
Speaker 3: racial dynamics of Handover or Ashland specifically. And I just,
34:29
Speaker 3: you know, wanted to add that Loving versus Virginia is
34:32
Speaker 3: a landmark case in the United States which held that
34:37
Speaker 3: laws that were banning in a racial marriage were unconstitutional.
34:41
Speaker 3: That is in nineteen sixty seven, so we're just talking
34:44
Speaker 3: about fifteen years before the incident that led to Marvin's
34:49
Speaker 3: wrongful conviction. And there have been thousands of wrongful convictions
34:54
Speaker 3: catalog by the National Registry of Exonerations which starts at
34:57
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine. But wrongful conviction didn't just start in
35:01
Speaker 3: this country in the nineteen eighties, right, And we could
35:04
Speaker 3: go back to the thirties and look at the Scottsboro Boys, right,
35:08
Speaker 3: who were young black teenage males who were wrongfully accused
35:14
Speaker 3: and convicted of raping white women in Alabama. And this
35:18
Speaker 3: nation has had a long history of wrongful conviction when
35:24
Speaker 3: it comes to black men who are accused convicted have
35:29
Speaker 3: been lynched of purported sexual assaults involving white women. And
35:35
Speaker 3: that's a context that exists in Marvin's case. He's convicted
35:40
Speaker 3: and tried by an all white jerry, and just the
35:45
Speaker 3: amount of process that went into this investigation and the
35:49
Speaker 3: sentence that he was given a life sentence right two
35:52
Speaker 3: hundred and ten years and so race pervaded his wrongful
35:57
Speaker 3: conviction in ways that have deep roots in American history.
36:05
Speaker 2: A lot of people ask me how to die. You know,
36:08
Speaker 2: I should be angry, I should be angry at the victim.
36:11
Speaker 2: And my response is, I can't be angry at the victim.
36:17
Speaker 2: For the separate fact what happened did happen. Everything that
36:20
Speaker 2: she described that happened to her that day, it did happen,
36:24
Speaker 2: But it wasn't me who did these things to her.
36:28
Speaker 2: While I was incarcerated, tried to take advantage of the
36:31
Speaker 2: system as far as you know, completing my education, going
36:34
Speaker 2: to college, taking up trades and all of this to
36:37
Speaker 2: keep moving forward. And if I were to go through
36:41
Speaker 2: that time period being angry and mad at the world,
36:46
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be where I'm at today because I've seen
36:50
Speaker 2: what anger can do to people. While I was there,
36:54
Speaker 2: you know, I chose to better myself, to move forward
37:00
Speaker 2: and to help those that I need, to be a
37:04
Speaker 2: voice for what happened. And once again, you know, what
37:08
Speaker 2: happened to me happens every day. We as a society,
37:12
Speaker 2: it has to be aware and accept that there are
37:16
Speaker 2: innocent people, men and women who are incarcerated for something
37:21
Speaker 2: or crimes they did not commit and we need to
37:24
Speaker 2: help and that is my goal to help change these
37:28
Speaker 2: laws and policy so we can have a better place
37:31
Speaker 2: for everyone.
37:35
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen
37:39
Speaker 1: to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week
37:41
Speaker 1: early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.
37:46
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler,
37:49
Speaker 1: and Kevin Wartiz for inviting me to sit in today,
37:52
Speaker 1: and thanks to our production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea,
37:56
Speaker 1: Lila Robinson, and Kathleen Fink. The music in this production
38:00
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
38:04
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us across all social media platforms
38:07
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good and at Wrongful Conviction, and you
38:11
Speaker 1: can follow me by going to my website Ashley Fonts
38:14
Speaker 1: dot com. That's Ashley A s H L E y
38:17
Speaker 1: F A n t z dot com. Wrongful Conviction is
38:21
Speaker 1: a production of Lava for Good podcasts and association with
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Speaker 1: Signal Company Number one