#401 Guest Host Ashley Fantz with Marvin Anderson

On a Saturday afternoon in July of nineteen eighty two, a young woman was walking home in Ashland, Virginia, when she was approached by a man on a bicycle. He offered to walk her home. She said no and kept walking, but a few minutes later she saw the man again. He attacked her and dragged her to a secluded wooded area, then beat and raped her over and over. The woman later described her attacker to police as a light skinned

Yes, thank you for having me. My name is Marvin Anderson. I was born and raised in Hanover County, Virginia, and I spent fifteen years incarcerated and five years on parole for a crime and did not.

Commit Thanks Marvin. Vanessa can you introduce yourself please.

My name is Vanessa Podcasin. I'm the director of Special Litigation at the Innocence Project in New York City, and over the course of the past two decades, I've helped exonerate over forty people nationwide.

That's extraordinary, Vanessa. Thank you. Marvin. I've never been to Hanover County. Take me back to your childhood in Hanover County.

It was a close knit community and African American people. You know, everyone knew everyone. You know, my grandmother and my great grandmother, all of them and my cousins were all was you know, in the same community. And then of course my mom and dad. I have three sisters. I had one brother who had died in an accident car accident when I was incarcerated. We all was close, you know. We had a nice big yard where we

Sports and what sport did you play?

Marvin, baseball, football, basketball, softball, a little bit of everything.

You know, what sport didn't you play?

Marvin didn't play volleyball too much. I did run track, so it wasn't much that I didn't really do. And at the time I didn't live too far from a volunteer fire department, so I spent a lot of my time there. At the age of ten, I was always at the fire station, you know, doing something, washing trucks, watching the guys train. Not only was I learning something, but it was a means of keeping me out of trouble. So from that time I was able to join the

What do you think drew you to want to be a firefighter? It's a very specific and demanding job.

My mom, my dad, my grandparents. You know, they taught us if there's someone out there in need or help, always give help in hand, regardless what color they were. If you can help them, you help them. And for the fire service, that was for me was a way of helping people.

The fire station. You had black people who work there, white people who worked there, a mixture of different ethnicities. And what do you think that taught you as well?

That we all are equal?

Back then, racism existed, but I never really felt what it was until I got arrested for my crime. You know, most African American until to grow up knowing who they can be around when it came to racistem I just knew people that didn't like my kind, but I knew to stay away from them. I respected them, Whether they respected me, that was on them.

According to census data, around fifty thousand people lived in Hanover County in the early eighties. Out of those, forty three thousand were white and less than seven thousand were black. So, Vanessa, I want to turn to you now. Can you tell us more about the racial climate in Hanover County at this time?

Well, I think in general, it's important for people to understand, you know, we're talking about nineteen eighty two, and if we just go back twenty thirty years, we are in the fifties and the sixties Virginia, and we are in a period of racial segregation. This is before the Voting Writes Act, or just within a decade and a half of the assassination of Martin Luther King, and so it may seem like, you know, that's far in America's history.

Had certain parts of the town where there's mostly you know, African American people live in a certain part of the town where it just only white people lived at But I had to say this. I stood out in Nashville because during that time, my fiance was a white woman, so that wasn't something that was well known or for most white people during that time to get used to seeing a black man with a white woman. Then look, they would give us. It would burn a hole through a wall.

So at this point, you're eighteen years old. You and your fiance have just moved from Richmond to Ashland, and you're about to pursue your dream of becoming a full fledged fireman. You must have felt like everything was going your way more than.

The counter had just started the first fire program, Well you could become a professional fireman, and I had just signed up for it. It was supposed to start it that fall.

And then on July seventeenth, nineteen eighty two, this incredibly horrific crime happened in Ashland. Vanessa, What do we know about what happened that day?

The victim in this case was walking home. She was taking a shortcut through a wooded area of rural over County and was approached by a man who rode up to her on a bicycle, threatened her with a gun, and proceeded to sexually assault her. And it was a very brutal attack that lasted over the course of a significant period of time, and when it was over, she was taken to the hospital, a rape kit was collected,

Marvin, Ashland was a pretty small, tight knit community. Like you said, at the time, did you hear anything about what had happened?

The crime actually took place on a Saturday, and that Sunday I had a softball game, so some of the teammates of minds, they was talking about what had happened. And during that time, a few of my teammates knew the perpetrator that committed this crime.

People knew about the crime itself because it had made the news. But I think you know what's so remarkable about Marvin's case is that from the beginning the community was aware of who really had committed the crime time.

And we'll talk about that more and who that person was a little bit later, But first, Marvin, can you tell us about the moment that you realized you were a suspect in the case.

I was at work at the time. I worked at Kingsmain part of my amusement park, and one of my supervisors came down to my posts and said they needed to see me in administration. And when I entered a room, there was the officer that I knew, and I actually called him by his first name.

I said, Hey, Roy, how you doing you know? And he didn't say anything.

And this officer was someone you knew pretty well.

Knew him so well that I've actually had eaten dinner at his dinner table with his kids.

When I was growing up.

Roy kids plays sports, so of course we met playing sports.

So it wasn't like he didn't know me. He knew me.

So these two officers, Roy Anderson and Marshall Bailey are questioning you.

The other officer mostly did all the talking. And that's when he started questioning about, you know, where was I at on the seventeenth of July around six thirty seven o'clock that afternoon. And I gave him an honest answer and I said, hey, I could have been anywhere, which is true. I could have been playing sports. I could have been at the fire station. You know, I just could have been anywhere. And he was asking about, you know, would you be willing to take a polograph test?

And the course, I agree to do.

So, Marvin, throughout all of that experience where you're being questioned, you're cooperating with them. Did you ever think I should get a lawyer?

No, you know, not once doing that entire question and even going down to the county lockup, did I think about a lawyer? You know, because I knew I didn't do what they said had happened.

You know, in cases like this, you know, you have Marvin, he's eighteen years old. They're law enforcement from his community. So they're people who, you know, he's been raised to give a certain amount of deference to and people that he knows, and they're coming at him from a perspective of, you know, we need your help in this investigation. And so he's not thinking that people are out to get him or that he is going to be railroaded for

Vanessa, what do we know about Royan Marshall's training at that time? Are they beat cops? How big was Ashlan Police Department?

I don't really have the answers to that, but I think that it's helpful they contextualize that. You know, we're talking about very small towns, you know, a population of around seven thousand, eight thousand people, you know, and when you consider police forces in more rural areas, they're not really trained or have experience often times in handling serious crimes.

Right, So let's get back to that day. They didn't end up doing the polygraph test, but there was a photo array and a live lineup.

And the front of thing, I bought it. When I first walked into that room, I saw a picture, a photo of me in a pholo, and I knew I'd never been in trouble, so I was just curious, how did he get this photo of me? That photo was my job id photo.

His picture was the only color photograph among other black and white photographs that were mug shots, and so it's a standout. While it's a photo array that has many choices, in reality, because of the suggestiveness, there's only one right choice of who the suspect is, and once that identification was made from the photo, he's then put in an

You know, my thought after the fact is that you know, if someone has shown you a photo of a person, regardless who that person may be, and within ten minutes you see that same person standing directly at front you, you're going to remember that phase of that photo.

And that's what happened.

Vanessa. Let's talk about the rape kit for a moment. Where was the rape kit tested and the significance of the erology. Of course, this is a era before we get to DNA.

At that time in sexual assault cases, the type of testing that was used was called ABO blood typing, and all it could do was include an individual among a large relatively large percentage of the population that could have been the source of biological evidence at a scene. So it

And just a note for everybody listening, remember that name Mary Jane Burton, because she'll be very important to this case later on. So then, Marvin, on January twentieth, you get arrested.

Of course, they took their first mug shot of me, fingerprinted me, and read me my charges that I was charged with rap slomy, robbery, introduction and I was locked up that night, and that's when everything happened that kind of destroyed my youth. By this time, the community is really talking about what happened. They got the wrong person this who did it?

And all this From the very beginning, the community knew because Otis Lincoln had stolen a bicycle earlier that day, and that was the bicycle that was used in the attack.

One of the guys that plaid on my team said, yeah, you know, Pop stole my bike. There was a name that they called him, Pop Lincoln. He was referring to n stole his bicycle, went off in the direction of where the crime had taken place.

And people immediately made this connection between Otis Lincoln and the crime, but of course it was too lat because police had already focused erroneously based on this suggestive identification on Marvin.

So we went to my attorney and informed him what the community is saying. They're saying that this John Pop Lincoln is the person they committed this crime. And my attorney said, well, I knew him. I represented him some years ago on a temporary rape on a female. So at that time, I'm thinking to myself that hey, okay, I got someone that's on my side now, someone that

That's not me.

However, the person and she described was John ODI's linking, but yet she identified me as her attacker.

So the trial began in December of nineteen eighty two before Judge Richard Taylor. Your attorney was Donald White. Take us back to that day, Marvin, if you can.

I'm sitting there, I had my family behind me, my mom, dad, grandparents, and I look over at my jury. You know, it's consisted of eight women, four men, all white, and I'm thinking, I'm going to prison. No matter what happens, I'm going to prison. So they come off turning. Then called the victim ones to stand to testify, and he asked, you know what happened. She said, I was returning from a restaurant, had a bucket of chicken in my hand. This black

Live too far.

He proceeded up the path, and when I approached him for the second time, he's laying on the side holding his knee like he hurt himself. And when I stopped to assist him, that's when he grabbed me. He dragged me in the woods, beat me, raped me, and he told me that you know, I wasn't his first white woman, that he had a white girlfriend and all of that. And he dragged me further into the woods and he beat me and raped me again, and then he left

What could be a lie.

I had my fiance testified that I picked her up from work one time. I went to my mother's house and washed the car, return home, We ate dinner, We watched Fantasy Islands and The Love Boat that night, and we went to bed. I had my mother neighbors testified that I was there washing the car. And not only that, I had the two witnesses that over heard John's Lincoln at the car wash saying what he would do to a white woman if they didn't want to give him any So I'm thinking all of this in my favor.

Marvin. I can't even imagine how frustrating that was for you. Frustrating is just not really a strong enough word to capture that. But as you would learn many years later, your attorney had his own reasons for not calling Lincoln to testify.

Donald White represented John Otis lancoln in connection with another assault that Lincoln was accused of, and that was a conflict because Marvin's defense at his trial was I'm not the person who committed this crime. This crime was committed by someone else. That someone else was a mystery at the time of trial. But of course Donald White could have presented evidence that that person was John Otis Lincoln, and he chose not to.

Wow, Vanessa, that is just unbelievable. Rather than disclose that he had a conflict of interest, which would have disqualified him as Marvin's attorney, Donald White just left John Otis Lincoln out of the trial totally. So pretty much all the jury had to go on was the victim's identification of you, Marvin.

The jury went out for deliberation in about thirty to forty five minutes came back guilty for two cancer rate sodomy, robbery in aduction and just ask them do you have a recommendation for sentenzens They say, yes, we onna we do two hundred and ten years in prison. Everything in the courtroom went blank, went dark. I could hear everyone in the courtroom, but I couldn't see noone. My family were sitting directly behind me, and I turned around to look at my mom and dad, and I could not

You know.

So my first day was basically preparing myself for what to come being in prison.

Marvin, how did you survive? How did you protect yourself in there?

You pick your friends wisely. The people that's incarcerated. You can see who's trying to do better for themselves while they're there, and you just pick your friends wisely. One of my best friends that I met when I was there, I never asked him why he was incarcerated, why he was locked up, and he never asked me. But we became good friends, almost like brothers, and we kind of looked out for one another.

And what about your fiance? Did she stay in your life.

Doing my incarceration. I did married my fiance. We remained at married for over ten years. We mutually agreed to have a divorce because we both had discussed about having children before all this happened, and I was not going to deny her that privileged to be a mother, and we got a divorce. She did have a baby girl. She was still visit me. When she came to visit me, she would bring her daughter.

So you went to prison in nineteen eighty three, and then five years later, something pretty remarkable happened, Vanessa. Can you tell us a little bit about that.

In nineteen eighty eight, Lincoln at that time had been convicted and was in prison for another crime and decided to come forward and actually confessed to having been the actual assailant for the crime for which Marvin was wrongfully convicted. And he agreed to testify.

Which he did at a state court hearing before the same judge as the first trial, Richard Taylor.

And the judge said, I don't find him credible. I don't believe him, and dismissed the evidence. And Marvin stayed in prison for another nine years after that before his release on parole. And this is something that we've seen in other wrongful conviction cases, where there's the true perpetrator confesses and courts dismiss it until there's forensic evidence like DNA to corroborate it. The confession of the actual assailant is just not believed.

So here we have another jaw dropping, unbelievable moment in this story. Vanessa, When did the Innocence Project get involved in Marvin's case.

Marvin wrote to the Nisence Project in the early nineties. We took on his case in nineteen ninety four and for the next five six years looked for the evidence from his case.

And did you have any idea what you were looking for?

The Innocence Project was searching for the rape kit itself to subject to DNA testing, and we couldn't find it. D Nnison's Project is a law clinic at Cardozo School of Law, so there were many law students who worked on Marvin's case. They were calling police departments, court clerks.

The lab.

Nobody could find the kit. It was gone. And this is the worst circumstance that we could have at the Nisonce Project. When we take on a case for DNA testing, our goal is to find the evidence to test it, and so to not be able to find the evidence, and this happens in about twenty five percent of our cases at the Innocence Project. We never get to testing. We have to close out the case for all purposes.

And that brings us back to Mary Jane Burton, the forensic analyst who performed those original rology tests back in nineteen eighty two. Mary Jane, it turns out, wasn't exactly doing things by the book.

So Mary Jane Burton, when her testing was complete, to cut off some of the tips of cotton swabs containing the evidence that was collected during the rape examination and taped those cotton tip swabs inside of her notebook. And that evidence that was saved inside of her notebook went off to storage with closed cases and was in a box in a file room for years to come.

And when you had those swaps tested. What did they tell you?

The test results came back and demonstrated that he was absolutely innocent, and the DNA was run through the DNA database and there was a hit. There was a match in the convicted of endor database, and the person at match was John Otis Lincoln, the person who everyone knew from the start and who had even confessed to being involved twenty years before.

Marvin, you had been granted parole in nineteen ninety eight and released, So by this time you were out of prison, but you were still living under the shadow of a wrongful conviction. And now in two thousand and one, thanks to that DNA test, your name was finally cleared. So what came next for you?

Well, I went through the fire academy, I graduated top of my class, and within a year or so, I became a lieutenant. Two three years down the road, moved up ranks again. I just retired maybe two years ago from being the chief of the very sane fire department that I had joined when I was thirteen years old, and I'm still heavily involved in the fire service out there in that county. But yeah, I was able to achieve a dream that I had becoming a professional fireman after I got my name clear.

So thinking about that officer, Roy, was he still around when you were fully exonerated.

Yes, he never spoke to me.

I would see him, you know, in restaurants or at the gas stations, and if he saw me coming across the parking lot, he would walk the opposite direction. Maybe his conscience had been eating at over that period of time, but he would never speak to me, or apologize or acknowledge what happened between.

Us, Vanessa, Were there any consequences for anyone, including that officer, for the way that this case was handled.

No, And unfortunately that's not unusual in wrongful conviction cases. Almost never is anyone held accountable, not the officers that were involved, the prosecutors or defense attorneys. Like in this case. I mean, Marvin's defense attorney had an obvious conflict having represented the person who actually committed the crime and was the alternate suspect. I mean, that is a conflict. That evidence should have been presented to the jury, but it wasn't.

You know, Vanessa, There's one thing that I do want to bring up here. Marvin's innocence case hinged on DNA testing which wouldn't have been possible if Mary Jane Burton hadn't broken the rules at her job. In fact, her action of saving those samples has actually resulted in the exoneration of a dozen other wrongfully convicted men at this point, But there are other cases I believe where her playing fast and loose with policy may have caused some harm.

Is she heroic? Is this visionary? Does that mean that there isn't any part of her work that could come under scrutiny? And so I think it's just, you know, an interesting thing about our society that doesn't see nuance or can't see that people can both do something great like save evidence that leads to the exoneration of many wrongfully convicted people, but also have flaws in her work at the same time, and it seems like those two truths might coexist.

Thank you both, Marvin and Vanessa for being here telling your story on wrongful conviction and what a link to the Innocence Project in our bio in case our listeners want to help support the great work that they're doing. And now we've come to the part of the show that we call closing arguments. This is a chance for you both to say anything that's on your mind, whatever you'd like listeners to take away from your story. Towards the beginning, you would asked some questions about the racial

Involving white women. And that's a context that exists in Marvin's case. He's convicted and tried by an all white jerry, and it's just the amount of process that went into this investigation and the sentence that he was given a life sentence right two hundred and ten years, and so race pervaded his wrongful conviction in ways that have deep roots in American history.

A lot of people ask me, how did I You know I should be angry, I should be angry at the victim, And my response is, I can't be angry at the victim. For the separate fact, what happened did happen. Everything that she described that happened to her that day, it did happen, But it wasn't me who did these things to her. While I was incarcerated, tried to take advantage of the system as far as you know, completing my education, going to college, taking up trades and all

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all Lava for Good podcasts one week early by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'd like to thank executive producers Jason Flamm, Jeff Kempler and Kevin Wardis for inviting me to sit in today, and thanks to our production team Connor Hall, Annie Chelsea, Lela Robinson and Kathleen Fink. The music in this production was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.