Law
Overdue justice
Richmond Law faculty and students helped exonerate a man who spent 45 years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit.
Professor Mary Kelly Tate, director of UR’s Institute for Actual Innocence, spent 13 years reinvestigating the case of Marvin Grimm, who was convicted in 1976 for assaulting and killing a child. She sought new DNA testing and advocated for his 2020 parole on the basis of his innocence. In June, the Virginia Court of Appeals issued a writ of actual innocence to him.
“I thought [the case] was riddled with structural red flags.”
Tate worked in partnership with students at the clinic and with lawyers at the Innocence Project and the law firm Arnold & Porter.
“I accepted the Innocence Project’s invitation to be local co-counsel on this case in 2007 because I thought it was riddled with structural red flags,” Tate said. The red flags included coercive interrogation tactics, a poorly executed investigation, a rush to judgment, and unreliable physical evidence.
New evidence developed from advancements in forensic and biological testing definitively eliminated him as the perpetrator and revealed that his confession to police was tainted and false.
“Though he can never get back those years, thanks to the tireless work of Professor Tate and that of her clinic students, Mr. Grimm can live out his days as an innocent man,” said Wendy Perdue, dean of the law school.