Gilbert Merritt III spent two decades in a jail cell for a murder he did not commit. Now, Virginia will provide compensation for the many years he lost and make it easier for him and others who were convicted of crimes due to malicious actions by public employees to receive additional funds from the state.
With help from the University of Virginia School of Law’s Innocence Project, Merritt’s conviction was vacated in July 2022. However, his exoneration did not immediately entitle him to financial redress because state law requires the enactment of specific legislation to compensate an individual who is wrongfully convicted.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin recently approved HB 1780, introduced by Del. Rip Sullivan ’87, to do just that for Merritt. In addition, Youngkin signed into law HB 1914, also sponsored by Sullivan, which removes a barrier for those who were convicted because of intentional acts of public safety officials or others on the government payroll, as Merritt was, to receive additional compensation.
Both bills — as well as separate legislation on behalf of Marvin Grimm, a wrongfully convicted man who spent nearly 45 years in prison for murder and sexual assault because of misconduct by authorities — passed unanimously in the General Assembly and represent the latest efforts by the commonwealth to pay back a debt that can never truly be repaid.
“We’ve worked on broad compensation reform for the wrongfully convicted with Del. Sullivan over the course of the last several years,” said Professor Juliet Hatchett ’15, a director of the Law School’s Innocence Project. “In that time, Virginia has made great improvements. This year, HB 1914 represents a huge step forward that would help establish Virginia at the forefront of the nation when it comes to compensating people who were wrongfully convicted because of intentional bad acts by public officials, such as corrupt law enforcement officers.”
The Innocence Project at UVA Law includes a yearlong clinic that students take for credit and extracurricular student pro bono efforts. Students investigate and litigate wrongful convictions of inmates throughout the commonwealth while participating in the clinic.
Sullivan, a member of the House of Delegates since 2014, has long been active on this issue, both sponsoring bills on behalf of exonerated individuals and working to improve the process. Among other reforms, he led efforts to eliminate the annuity system for compensation, through which individuals would receive an initial sum but would then have the balance of what they are owed paid over many years.
With HB 1914, Sullivan took aim at what he viewed as a unique, and particularly egregious, subset of exonerations.
Merritt and Grimm, he said, “were the first two cases I believe that I’ve done where the wrongful conviction was clearly, and had been found to be the result of, purposeful conduct by law enforcement.”
“That, to me, put them in a different category,” he said.
Merritt was given a 30-year prison sentence in November 2001 following his conviction for a murder outside a Norfolk, Virginia, convenience store — even though there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime, and despite his alibi.
He was another victim of notorious Detective Robert Glenn Ford, who had been involved in other cases the UVA Law Innocence Project had taken on. In Merritt’s case, Ford convinced a woman to give false testimony, which she eventually retracted.
Ford, who was also at the center of the infamous “Norfolk Four” case involving sailors wrongfully convicted of rape and murder, was eventually found guilty on federal charges that included extortion, conspiracy to commit extortion and making false statements.
Professor Jennifer Givens, who leads the school’s Innocence Project with Hatchett and worked to help set Merritt free, said Ford “had a number of schemes going on” in different investigations, including recruiting witnesses who faced drug charges by promising them that he could make them go away in exchange for false testimony.
“These are the most vulnerable people who are locked up and want to get out, and he would try to give them a ticket out. And that’s what happened in Gilbert Merritt’s case,” Givens said.
Like Merritt, Grimm’s life was also devastated by bad actors in law enforcement. Grimm was convicted for the 1975 murder and sexual assault of a 3-year-old boy in Richmond and was not paroled until 2020. While on parole, Grimm was required to register as a sex offender despite his innocence. Last year, the Virginia Court of Appeals fully exonerated him of the crime.
Angelique Ciliberti ’17, who participated in the Innocence Project Clinic while at UVA Law, is now a senior associate at Arnold & Porter, which worked on Grimm’s case with the Innocence Project, a national organization.
Grimm was convicted after police pressured him to obtain a confession, which included keeping him awake for nearly 24 hours, supplying him with details of the crime and threatening him with the death penalty even though the death penalty was not available for the crime charged.
“We know that physical and psychological circumstances can create an environment where someone would confess to a crime they did not do. Marvin was exposed to many of those factors during his interrogation, and his recorded confession shows significant contamination by the officers,” Ciliberti said.
Many years later, modern DNA testing invalidated the physical evidence used to corroborate the coerced confession, including eight hairs found in Grimm’s car and apartment that officials had falsely attributed to the boy.
Additionally, blood-type testing that would have proven Grimm’s innocence was mischaracterized during a hearing at the time — and this was just some of “the intentional misconduct” by authorities in his case, Ciliberti said.
Now, Merritt and Grimm will not only receive compensation for being exonerated, but will be the first beneficiaries of HB 1914.
While Virginia law previously allowed for additional compensation in convictions involving bad actors in government, state funds could only be allocated after the locality where the malfeasance occurred agreed to match the amount, giving them, in effect, a veto power, Sullivan said.
He noted that there were any number of scenarios where a locality “might think they shouldn’t have to match it or, probably even more likely, a situation in which a locality can’t afford it.”
“That struck me as a problem,” Sullivan said, adding that people who have already endured so much should not then be forced to sue a city or county for relief.
So, Sullivan crafted HB 1914, which, he said, addresses the shortcoming in the law by stipulating that the commonwealth and locality will each contribute half, but if a local or county government refuses, state officials can withhold money that would otherwise be appropriated to that locality to expedite the distribution of funds.
“These are not only legal but moral obligations of the commonwealth, as far as I’m concerned, and we’ve got to figure out a way to pay it,” Sullivan said.
Merritt and Grimm both testified before Virginia lawmakers earlier this year about what they endured. While no compensation could be sufficient, the act itself remains an essential step in attempting to make things right, those who have worked on their cases agree.
“There’s no amount of money that could give Marvin those years back, the family relationships, all the holidays, weddings and birthdays that he missed. But having the commonwealth provide for compensation acknowledges the wrongdoing that occurred, and my hope is that Marvin and his family can now move forward,” Ciliberti said.
Added Hatchett of Merritt: “Our hope is that this increased compensation can help him meaningfully rebuild his life while also providing additional deterrence from such horrific misconduct by public employees in the future.”
Read the full article here: https://www.law.virginia.edu/news/202504/new-virginia-legislation-compensates-wrongfully-convicted-innocence-clinic-client
