#476 Maggie Freleng with Marvin Haynes

In May of two thousand and four. Marvin Haynes was a pretty average sixteen year old kid.

I was a party animal at that time, so it was like I just couldn't wait for the weekends and just you know, just to have a good, nice clothes on and just be able to go have fun. That's what I was like doing.

Marvin didn't have a care in the world except for the latest trends and chasing girls. That is until he was picked up by the police.

It was just like basically something happened bad and just asking me like was I involved or do I know anything like that? And they was talking about a flower shop, so I didn't really know what they were talking about.

They never really told me it was a murder.

Marvin says he had never been in any kind of serious trouble, so he wasn't really worried about it. He figured there was a mix up and the police would get it right.

I was thinking more like at that time, as long as I get out by Friday and so I can go on.

What I was doing is wels, Yeah, So I was like that's all my thought process was.

But Marvin never left the station.

Hi, my name is Marvin Haynes. I was wrongly convicted at sixteen. I spent nineteen in like seven months incarcerated.

From lava for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. Marvin Hayes Marvin Haynes was born on December sixth, nineteen eighty seven. He was raised in a working class family in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father worked in construction and his mother stayed at home raising the family. He's one of seven kids.

I got three sisters older than me, well, four sisters and then me. Then I got a little brother and a little sister. I'm the oldest boy.

Wow.

We had a close knit family.

So it was like we did all a lot of things together, like summer vacations to my granny home.

State Vllley Fair, six Flags, you know what I'm saying.

So it was kind of like Marvin says, growing up, life was pretty good.

As a kid.

I just like to have fun and like you know, play with cars and you know stuff like that, just like kid things. So like I go home watch Nickelodeon literally, so yeah, that was like one of my things.

All the classic Nickelodeons, all the classes, you know. Hay Arnold's. There was like, oh, did you ever watch Doug Doug?

Also, what's the Rugrats? You know what I mean? So like all that stuff.

Marvin told me he especially loved to bike ride.

People look at me and be like at my cass and be like, do you play football? Used to play football? But no, I just used to watch ride bikes.

A lot, kind of bikes like BMX bikes, regular.

All the BMX bikes like Gt. Dino's, Gary Fisher's.

You know, yeah, the nice bikes. Yeah.

But as he got older and became a teenager, Marvin says his priorities changed.

It was all about being having the newest clothes and like girls parties every weekend, go to like all the parties in the neighborhood, so you know, just having fun.

Having fun with your friends around.

Yeah that was me. Yeah, literally, Like so I liked it having all the new shoes and stuff like that. So that was like what I liked doing.

Did you work? No?

I didn't work.

How'd you get money to buy nice shoes?

I got five sisters and stuff, So I used to like, honestly, some of my sister used to have the nicest shoes and if I couldn't get them that week or something, I'd probably get, you know, get their shoes or because they had jobs and stuff.

So yeah, so I had ways, and Marvin knew how to hustle his sisters.

I had children really young.

This is Marvin's sister, Marvina. She's four years older.

And Marvin helped me out with the kids because I was like always like going out and running the streets.

And you left your baby brother to you.

But it was the house of us, right. It was like the mom is there and she probably don't want to watch the kid. And then Marvin's like, you give me five dollars. I'm like, yeah, I'm giving you five dollars.

I'm out of.

Marvin was just an ordinary sixteen year old kid, hanging out with friends and chasing the latest trends.

Honestly, I was just living for the that day, Marvin told me.

The evening of Sunday, May sixteenth, two thousand and four, was just like any other.

I was at a party, you know what I'm saying, Like, just having fun, doing regular things, went home late, you know, like two in the morning, two three in the morning, slept.

And woke up like a normal day. You know, like woke up at like late in the afternoon.

Marvin says he got up and went to meet up with friends at some local spots.

Like where I know everybody yet, so just going about your norse.

Yeah, I was going by my normal life.

So a few days later, on May nineteenth, Marvin wakes up to his mom and I think it was a Wednesday.

I was woke up early in the morning and my mom was basically saying, like, the police here. They got a warrant for your arrest. They just want to talk to you.

At first, Marvin says he wasn't too concerned because.

This that happened to me before, for like violations of curfews and different things like that.

In fact, that's exactly the charge. They picked him up and held him on he'd missed a court appearance for breaking curfew.

With you, okay.

The police took Marvin into the station for questioning.

Okay, okay, Yeah, they brought me into an interrogation room, set me in there for a while.

I feel like I don't have nothing to hide, okay, your junior.

So Marvin spoke to the officers with no adult or attorney president, thinking this was just for a curfew violation, and I think it was a curve from g.

And I was walking to the club.

She regretting because you don't have a car, you don't have a relacens.

I ain't got no much, okay, but just was telling them my normal thing of what I was doing that past week, you know, like the past days that led it to me being in that room. So I'm just telling them like who I hang with, where i'd be at, you know, just stuff like that, and oh my cousin Poopie house. I actually had some cash on me, so I was asking them about, like, hey, did you make sure you give me a receipt for the money that I you know that I had when I came here?

I said, seat because they took they took my money after the game. I didn't know nothing. I had no idea what was going on.

Marvin had no idea that while he was sitting there worrying about receipts for a few dollars, that he'd been identified in a murder.

But then when I when I was hearing them saying like we got your fingerprints and stuff like that, and I was just like I was like discompibulated, Like what what was y'all talking about.

I had to really think back, like what did I do wrong this weekend?

We know you were in that Mark, Okay, so we know that.

And they was talking about a flower shop, and I ain't never told nobody ain't a flower shop. Yeah you have, Yeah, you have, Marvin straight up. Now, I'm keeping it real with you.

You say, keep unreal.

I'm just trying to give her town.

That's Martin.

Where you saying, you saying that you're trying to point You're trying to say that you were in the flower shop.

Yeah.

Straight, I was putting two together and I still was kind of confused, expressing to them like y'all got the wrong person.

That person had shot and killed fifty five year old Randy Scharer inside his family business, Jerry's Flower Shop.

Is that a flower shop in North Minneapolis May sixteenth, two thousand and four. Someone comes in and is asking for flowers, ends up, you know, pulling a gun and saying he wants money from from the back.

This is Andrew Marcourt. He's a managing attorney at the Great North Innocence Project. Andrew explains that the robber had originally been speaking with Cynthia McDermott when her brother Randy walked.

In and the person shoots him two times.

Then McDermott flees out the back.

She becomes kind of the primary eyewitness in the case.

McDermott had run to a neighbor's house and called nine one one before rushing back to the flower shop, where she found her brother Randy dead. McDermott told first responders that the gunman was a tall, thin blackmail in his early twenties. She said he weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds, and she also specified his hair was short cropped to his head. When police first showed her a photo lineup, she identified someone with what she said was seventy five to eighty percent confidence.

This witness Cynthia McDermott. She actually picked a filler, which is like one of the nun suspects in the lineup. You know, she picked this person who looks nothing like Marvin and more to the points, I mean, you know, in terms of just best practices, when someone picks a filler, I mean, what that tells you is they don't, you know, like they don't have a good memory of what the suspect looks like.

Why wouldn't it have been that guy.

Well, one, he was a filler, so there was no reason to suspect him. He was just pulled from the database. But also they did they did actually look into whether he could be a credible suspect, and he appeared to have an alibi that he was in South Dakota at the time. That really should have been the end of it for her, that that should have been like, well, she doesn't know, so we're going to have to solve this case some other way. But that wasn't the end

Why did you have the nickname Little Marvin?

My dad named.

Marvin, So it was like everybody that know me called me little Marvin, or everybody that like literally that know.

Me, call me Little Marvin.

At the time, Marvin was indeed little, at least compared to the suspect that McDermott had described.

He was much smaller, I think about fifty pounds lighter than the estimate, several inches shorter, several years younger, but perhaps most Obviously, the witnesses just both to describe someone with short hair. The primary witness that he had short cropped.

Hair, and at the time Marvin had a tall afro.

Nothing anyone could describe as close cropped hair. When they did the photo lineup, though, they didn't use a contemporaneous picture of him, even though he'd been arrested at that time and they had there was you know, they had a mugshot created that day.

What they used was a.

Two year old photo where he did have short hair, so it was much more closely resembling what the witnesses had described, even though that wasn't how he looked that day. So that was a problem.

So they have they they have Marvin in custody right now. Yeah afro. They know this witness they're looking for is taller with no afro, and they're like, well, fine, we'll just we'll still go for him.

But an old picture, yeap.

So they so they use this old picture and in that time she she did pick him. I mean, this case is just an absolute disaster from a eyewitness identification perspective.

At least, I'm keeping it.

I'm keeping it.

When they came to see me, they was asking me that, so this is how you wear your hair?

Tell me why did you change your hair style?

And I didn't put twods too together because I'm like, I didn't. I just like this, I'll wear my hair, you know. They kept asking me about my hair.

Eventually, Marvin was put in a live lineup work.

Going in March. Stand right there and right there, look straight at the window. Turns it right.

I've never been in a lineup? What is that like? Is it like in the movies? Like are you? Is there a glass wall and you can't see that?

No way, I can't even lie to you.

It's true when they say that when you go to like through a like a uh a difficult moment in or life or is something like hard like that, you can't really remember it like I can't.

I couldn't really remember it for years until I really seenk.

It don't move and allowed the many voice repeat that to me.

Don't don't move. Where's the tape? Where's the tape? This is no joke, there's no joke. I want the money. I want the money.

No tell no till in that lineup, McDermott picked Marvin again, and at this point Marvin realized he might be in trouble.

Got intense, and then I realized, like, man, like they trying to, you know, frame me. But then I was thinking like, well, they gonna find the right person and then they gonna just gonna come and correct this. I literally didn't think that I would be going to prison or I would be arrested for something like this. So I was more thinking I was in I was trusting them, thinking like Okay, well they gonna figure this out and they gonna come to me and be like, Okay, we

Or don't talk to the police. We was talk like the police is the good guys.

But the police charged Marvin with first degree murder and second degree assault. Happened to Marvin. It affected our whole family, Mervin's mother especially.

She asked me once though, she was like, Marvin, did you have anything to do with this, and I told her, like she only asked me one time. I said, no, I had, I don't know nothing about this, and she never asked me again. She knew that I wasn't lying about that, you know what I mean.

We were a good kid, yeah, but never I.

Wouldn't say I was a great kid. But she knew that I wasn't involved in on stuff like that, you know what I'm saying. So it only took for me to tell her one time that I wasn't involved in it or I didn't have and she knew that I wasn't lying about it, you know what I mean.

But the truth that her sixteen year old boy was being charged with murder was too much for Mervin's mom to handle.

My mom kind of like mentally checked out. There was like never any more dinner at the dinner table. Our parents separated totally at that point. And so when it affected my mom and my parents, it affect us all, which caused the other children to end up being like

She took it hard.

She started partying more too after that and just going out. My mom never was going out. She stayed at home, took care of us. But once this happened to me, she's just like, you know, like was trying to escape it, you know what I'm saying, or trying to figure because she felt like she couldn't do.

Nothing, and she couldn't. The case was moving forward with the witness ideas in the bag, the police focused on what they believed had happened, homing in on Marvin's family for answers.

They claim that Marvin was hanging out with some friends and his cousin over at another friend's house.

The police questioned Marvin's fourteen year old cousin, Isaiah. During the first few interviews, Isaiah didn't have anything to say, but then in a later interrogation, Isaiah cracked. He allegedly told police.

That Marvin said that the mourning of that he was going to go hit a lick, which is like a slang term for committed a robbery. Afterwards, he told him he had shut a white man.

He'd be the first of three kids who the police would use to implicate Marvin in the crime. A few months later, a fourteen year old acquaintance of Marvin's gave a statement. Anthony Todd told police had also heard Marvin bragging about hitting a lick. Then a year later, in August two thousand and five, seventeen year old Marvin Haines

He actually, in a pretty dramatic moment, actually tried to recant from the stand at trial and said, look, this isn't true. The only reason I said it is that they were threatening me with my own time. Said that I was looking at you know, up to fifteen years, get half of what Marvin's looking at if if I don't cooperate.

He told the people.

He told a judge, he said, look y'all making me say my cousin to jail for something he didn't do. He's screaming like this man is He's saying, like my cousin is innocent, And they took him off the stay.

They they call a recess because things really went off the rails. I mean, this is in live court with the state, and then they go back and you know, basically they're threatening him with perjury charges if he doesn't recant his recantation. And he was you know, there was testimony that he's on the hall he's you know, a kid and who like bawling in the hallway because he's

A few other witnesses were called to the stand, including Robb Seely, who was a fourteen.

Year old boy who was in the neighborhood attending temple and just happened to be walking by and heard shots and saw someone fleeing shortly.

After the shooting. Seely had ideed Marvin in a lineup, but a year later on the stand, Seely said he had doubts. Another witness Jennifer Coleman testified that she had spoken to Marvin the morning of the shooting at his house and he told her he shot some old white man. However, Coleman could not I d Marvin in court and the house she had said was Marvin's was actually the house of another person named Marvin. Things were looking shaky for

What I'm like, man, look often in take the stand and tail they's people that I'm innocent.

You know what I'm saying.

I'm telling my story, and I was able to I was able to tell, you know, I wasn't the person that committed this crime.

You know.

He gave a story which is the same story he's been saying for years, which is that he was home in bed that morning, that he went out with friends the night before, was I got home kind of late, slept in and it was kind of an unremarkable day. So that that was essentially the defense case.

After a week long trial. With no forensic evidence tying Marvin to the shooting, no murder weapon, shaky witness ideas, and even a witness recanting on the stand, Marvin thought he'd be back to being a teenager in no time. Did you think you'd be convicted?

No, I did not think I was going to be convicted.

I did not ever think I was going to be convicted, Like, especially with all the evidence that I seen myself. So I'm thinking, like, it's so obvious they this is impossible for me to get convicted.

So when it happened, it was just like I was shocked. I was just like damn.

On September second, two thousand and five, the jury convicted Marvin a first degree murder and second degree assault. Did you see your family in the courtroom?

Yeah? Hell, yeah, my mom that that.

Yeah, that's okay. There's tissues right here too.

Yeah.

I'm good though, But I just see my mom. I had affected her. That's the only thing that made me upset. She actually just walked out, and she was said so mad.

After seeing his mother walk out, seventeen year old Marvin, upset and angry, lashed out at the judge, yelling.

All y'all gonna burn it hell, because you'll know I didn't commit this, that's what you said.

Yeah I did. It was just like I said.

When it happened, I couldn't believe that they was able to you know, a judge was able to see this stuff taking place, and like it was. The courtroom was packed with people and they seen that, you know, I was actually wrongly convicted.

It was very hard for us to actually understand what was happening to Marvin because we had this faith into the system.

Later that month, Judge Robert Blazer sentenced Marvin to life in prison. Well, Marvin's family grappled with their new reality. Marvin was in his own health, sent to an adult men's prison to serve his time, and in order to survive. Marvin says he had to be tough.

When I first got to prison, I had to, you know, do a lot of different things to establish my dominance and let them know, like I'm not going for none of this type of stuff.

Well did you have to do you're a kid that winds up in an adult prison, Yeah, I had.

I was doing a lot of fighting when I came to the county. I was fighting adults.

I understand now that a lot of people going through a lot of things in there, So anything could send somebody over there over the top, any little thing, or it's just like that because you people facing life. I was hopeless at that point.

Marvin told me, with time like that, some people have nothing to lose, so they'll try to prove themselves by picking on someone else like a kid.

You gotta, you know, protect yourself by any means, you know what I'm saying, Or you'll become a victim in that place because in them environments like you test it all the time, you know what I mean, Or just like you got to prove yourself.

I was.

I was hanging out with people that I wasn't you know, that wouldn't have the best my best interest at hand.

So I had to really learn a lot.

You know.

When I first got there, I was seventeen years old, so I was, you know what I'm saying, just trying to get by.

Actually, Marvin says he's lucky he's not facing time for something he actually did, like fighting with other prisoners.

I could have harmed somebody in there, or somebody could have harmed me because in them environments, like people I don't understand like you test it all the time.

But Marvin says things changed when he wound up in solitary confinement just shortly after he got to prison.

I ended up in a whole one time and I read about the Innocent Project. It was at the last page of the the article that I of this magazine that I seen. It was literally the last page and it was just saying, if you actually innocent, you wrongly convicted, please.

Contact Is this in a prison magazine or like what magazine was the Innocence Project advertising in?

Yeah? Probably I think it was. It was like a mirror of prison mirrors.

Oh yeah, it was so yeah, it was at the last page, and I'm like, damn, I'm like I I literally ripped it out. So when I got out the whole, when write to the lad Iberry, that's when I really started finding out like, damn, You're not the only person that's gone through this or that went through this.

So I started writing people I could beare to even write, No, I.

Still can't get over that you were a child, Like thinking back for sixty and I don't know if I would even comprehend what a life sentence is.

Yeah, I couldn't even describe it. Yep, I show you a letter.

I was all over the place where explaining my story of people and just trying to get them to understand that I'm innocent.

Marvin says. A week later, the Great North Innocence Project wrote him back and sent a questionnaire. He filled it out and sent it back and then waited and waited, but nothing. So we went ahead and filed an appeal without them in two thousand and seven, but he was denied.

I got that letter in the mail and I sat down and I read it, and I was just like, all right, I gotta find a different way. Like literally, I didn't never give up. I didn't cry, I didn't I wasn't mad or nothing. I was just like, okay, well they not listening at this time, you know, and I'll go to I used to go tell the people that I was close to in there, and I used to tell them like, look, man, my appeal got denied, and they and they ain't really give me no words

Marvin says he didn't even want to tell his family because he didn't want to disappoint them. Plus he was on the outs with some family members like his cousin Isaiah and his sister Marvina.

I didn't talk to Marvin for like three or four years just because of family issues.

But Marvina and Marvin eventually reconnected and she became the driving force behind his case. It all happened when Marvin convinced her to take over his social media. We talked over the phone a few times and Marvin was like, just take my past code. I don't want your past go.

So I finally took the past code and I started to work his social media account. And then as I was sitting on my couch, I had started connecting with people like all over the world in Hong Kong, people from Detroit, Michigan, everywhere, and I was aligning myself anywhere that I can to tell what had happened to my brother.

So Marvina hit the streets and made a sign with Marvin on it, and I went out to this protest.

A sister by the name Amoni Dotton asked me if I wanted to speak on my brother's behalf, and when she pulled.

Me to the front, is like she pulled me through a universe, and I felt this power. At the time, North Minneapolis was dealing with a surge in violent crime. Many residents were scared and elected officials and the police responded by arresting people in record numbers, not all of them guilty, and many from families just like Marvina's.

So family started to reach out to me and they say, we found you on Facebook, We've seen you on a news or we heard you speak here.

This is going on with our family.

I started organizing protests and press conferences for my brother in Minneapolis.

Woke Marvin up at the age of sixteen in our mother house. In two thousand and four, they gave him life for a crime evidence shows he didn't commit this t I was like popping up at the key at the General's office, going to the Governor's house wherever I needed to be, because I needed people to understand that when we're talking about Wronfau incarceration.

That's a state of emergency. There's more than one way to lynch amen, and what they're doing with wrongfo incarceration, that's called a miling day lynching.

While Marvina fucked for Marvin on the outside, Marvin continued researching his case and writing The Great North Innocence Project. From the inside.

There was a couple of rounds where he had reached out to us over the years, and there weren't any real big breaks for a long time. But then finally just a couple of years ago, we were able to get some new evidence. Kind of the big break for us was we were able to talk with Robbie Seely, who was one of the eyewitnesses.

Robbie Ceely was the fourteen year old who said he saw someone fleeing the flower shop. He'd initially id'd Marvin, but later on the stand expressed doubts.

He told us that he never actually got a good look at Marvin's face, that he didn't know who the perpetrator was, that he felt pressured to make an identification because you know, he himself was a young kid at the time and the police were saying this is a really serious case. He felt like he needed to help him out, and he did the best he could within some very flawed procedures, but he had no idea and he never saw the person's face and was willing to go on the record with that.

From there, the prosecution's entire case crumbled.

Got recantation from Anthony Todd, who is one of one of the witnesses who said a trial that Marvin had told him he was going to go.

Hit a lick.

Remember he was fourteen, a middle schooler.

He originally said he didn't know anything until he got into some trouble himself. And so the police go and see him and and you know, similarly are sort of threatening him with his own time, and he cracks in the same way that Isaiah Harper did.

Marvin's cousin Isaiah.

The police had tried to talk to Isaiah many, many times.

They came to him multiple times, saying, well, you're going to get charged with drive without license or these different charges if you know you don't give us information.

Now, he had had tried to recance back at trial, but he he, you know, sort of reaffirmed his reincantation to us. He said that they had reason to think it was Marvin and that they knew he had him from and that look, you know, if you are if you're obstructing an investigation, you can get half the time that the principal actor is looking at You could be looking at fifteen years and he was I think he was fourteen at the time. He was even younger than Marvin.

Teenagers being threatened to lie on another teenager.

I mean, it's not that hard to understand, like why you would crack under those circumstances.

Marvina, did you talk to your cousin at that time?

Yeah, he lived with me throughout it. I helped support it Isaiah, even when folks out that I shouldn't have had supported Isaiah.

That's still my blood cousin.

And at that time I knew that the police had done something bad and then even using our cousin to test, to make him throw him in adult prisons, to make him say that his own blood cousin did that. Do you you know how it made Isaiah feel walking into Thanksgiving, everybody's whispering around his head.

He's fourteen years old.

A lot of my cousins and stuff family members, they didn't even allow him over at their house because they like, you send little Marvin and jail for life. And you know, he's innocent. I got cousins that don't even still talk to him to this day, and he's affected by that. So they created more victims victims by doing that.

Well, we were able to get an eyewitness i ID expert to do a really deep dive on some of the problems with his case and the science behind eyewitness identifications to show that this was just a really profoundly flawed idea.

To start. The photo lineup was not done in a double blind manner.

Which you know, means that the person administering the lineup does and know who the suspect is, which is just a really basic fundamental best practice for eyewinness identifications.

And then the police used to Marvin again in a second lineup, this time a.

Live, old fashioned in person lineup, and that again just violates sort of every best practice. No, and like it's just a basic principle that you don't show the witnesses the same suspect more than once. And there's a couple of reasons for that that are pretty intuitive, Like, once they've seen him, he's gonna look familiar to them, right, because he's the one. He's the only common denominator, right, He's the one they're showing me more than once. That

So that was.

Just enormously problematic, and.

From the jump one of the officers at the lineup had raised concerns, Michael Keef. He said he wasn't confident in the identification correct, that he had doubts as to convicted defendants guilt.

Yeah, and he testified that he had problems with the lineup procedures, and he objected at the time and it was overruled. And he testified that this was the one case he'd worked on that had resulted in a conviction where he had real doubts about whether that person was guilty, which was a pretty pretty dramatic moment in the court that week.

Andrew and the Great North Innocence Project filed their case in late June of twenty twenty three and had a hearing around Thanksgiving. By this point, the case was huge news.

When I came back from court, everybody that I knew, I will everybody in the prison was just like walking up to me, like, man, you was on court TV because you see all the and stuff and seeing that I was on front page to start your grew and I'm like, look, it's it's impossible for them not to, you know, give me some gestice at this time, because it's it's everywhere, you know what I mean, people seeing that. You know, I was actually growly convicted that they put

I was just so happy.

And then Marvin's thirty sixth birthday came.

I was actually just being a chill that day. I worked out.

It was gonna make me some food and just watch the sport. I wasn't gonna watch the NBA like it was. NBA was a Wednesday, I think it was Boston. It was a couple of double hitters or something like that that day. So I was keeping it simple actually, and then I got a call and shit.

And December sixth we were able to call him and tell him that the Stay Headed read that we had proved our case, they were gonna concede, and that he was gonna go home. It was pretty incredible.

What did he say? Do you even remember like what happened?

I mean, it was just I kind of could hear a little happiness then Andrew voice.

Because you know, he more nuts alned with his stuff and just like reserve and shit, So he really don't he really you don't really see too much emotion from him, you know what I'm saying, Like that.

Was just like WHOA.

I couldn't even really I just was like Pam. I just was excited because I knew that day was gonna come. I never doubted it, you know what I'm saying.

I never, not once.

I never thought myself that you're never gonna I never I knew that I wasn't gonna do no life since that, you know what I'm saying.

I knew that because I'm I got too much fight in you, you know what I'm saying.

A few days later, Marvin was a free man.

Almost twenty years ago, a terrible injustice occurred when this state prosecuted Marvin Haines.

In front of the press and his family. Mary Moriarty, the county's top prosecutor, looked Marvin in the eye and offered an apology.

You lost the opportunity to graduate from high school, to attend prom have relationships, attend weddings and funerals, and spend time with your family around the holidays. I am so deeply sorry for that.

Marvin says he was able to keep fighting because of his faith.

God finna give me do this. So it was more.

I had so much faith, man, You had no idea, and I don't even know how I had that much faith. Even now, I still got the faith, but I always knew. I'm like, man, look this stuff based on truth is gonna reveal.

Marvin has had just an incredible support group, you know, an incredible amount of support from his family. His sisters have been standing by his side for years, just fighting relentlessly for him.

Marvina founded Minnesota Wrongfully Convicted Judicial Reform because of Marvin's wrongful conviction, but she says she hasn't forgotten about Randy Shearer and Cynthia McDermott.

I'm really really sorry that that happened to that family, and when the right person doesn't go to jail, we know that that leaves the killer out to prey on other people in our community.

She now works to help other families fighting for loved ones who are wrongfully convicted. Marvin and I spoke at this year's Innocence Network conference in New Orleans, just three months after his release from prison. He told me about his new place he just furnished, and how excited he is to work.

I work at It's like a material handler typeverything, fork lift driving, different.

Things like that. But my job.

I like my job, and stuff is cool because I was in prison working doing similar work and I was getting paid like twenty five cents an hour, you know what I'm saying. So after two weeks of eighty hours, my check fourteen dollars, you know what I'm saying.

Or it's just crazy.

So to know that I got at least I'm able to, you know, take care of my responsibilities and stuff with a job and just accomplish the goals at I'm sitting, are.

You thinking about like dating or having a family or anything like that.

No, I don't. I don't thinking about no family.

I am dating though I got a girlfriend and stuff that I've been with that that was rocking it out with me when I was in there and stuff. She been there through some through some hard times and help me with a lot of stuff. So yeah, but yeah, I don't see no kids in my future. I feel like I had too much time taking away so I kind of.

Wanted, like, just live your own mind in my life.

Yeah, and I feel like I want to be the baby, you know what I'm saying, and be spoiled and all that stuff.

So yeah, does your girlfriend spoil you?

Yeah?

She do. Honestly, I'm a miss Like waking up to breakfast and coffee and stuff like that, I was just thinking like, damn, like to know, I'm not going to wake up to that. You know, it's gonna be cray. I gotta do it all myself, like she Yeah, it's gonna be weird, but I do.

I'll be ay.

Marvin, how do you feel now you're out? But knowing now that that back then there were police officers that weren't they didn't feel good about this. Your cousin was lying like, how do you feel now looking back that all of these people just didn't even feel good about this conviction.

At the end of the day, I'm not mad at them because you know, carmar always come back around and truth always prevails. So the end of the days like I can't dwell on what they've done to me or I feel some way about it, because luckily I got my life and I'm still young and I'm able to still go be productive, and I'm so blessed.

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in the episode description to see how you can help. This episode was written by me Maggie Freeling, with story editing and mixing by senior producer Rebecca Ibada. Our producer is Kathleen Fink. Our researcher is Halle Dolce, with additional mixing by Josh Allen and additional production help by Jeff Cliburn.