Ex-Virginia Death-Row Prisoner With Strong Claim of Innocence Get Parole After 38 Years

Joseph M. Giarratano (pic­tured), a for­mer Virginia death-row pris­on­er who came with­in two days of exe­cu­tion, has been been grant­ed parole after 38 years in jail for a rape and dou­ble mur­der that lawyers and sup­port­ers have long said he did not commit. 

On November 20, twen­ty-six years after Governor L. Douglas Wilder com­mut­ed Giarratano’s death sen­tence to life, the Virginia State Parole Board vot­ed to grant him parole. Giarratano was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in Norfolk, Virginia in 1979 for the rape and cap­i­tal mur­der of a fif­teen-year-old girl and the mur­der of her moth­er. Giarratano had lived in their apart­ment — which was known as a ​“par­ty house” with a free flow of vis­i­tors — in the month before the mur­der and was there the night of the mur­ders, but because of drug use, he says, he has no rec­ol­lec­tion of what hap­pened. He said he woke up on the couch, dis­cov­ered the bod­ies, and because no one else was in the apart­ment, he assumed he had com­mit­ted the killings. He fled to Florida, where he turned him­self in to a sher­iff at a Jacksonville bus sta­tion and con­fessed to the murders.

Over the course of time, Giarratano gave a total of five con­fes­sions, which were incon­sis­tent with one anoth­er and con­flict­ed with the evi­dence at the crime scene. Footprints, fin­ger­prints, and pubic hairs were recov­ered at the crime scene and did not match either Giarratano or the vic­tims. Experts indi­cat­ed that the killer was right-hand­ed, but Giarratano is left-hand­ed. Giarratano’s con­fes­sions were so incon­sis­tent that detec­tives told him they did not believe him and, he said, pro­vid­ed him with detailed infor­ma­tion that he then par­rot­ed back to them in his fifth confession. 

Gerald Zerkin, one of Giarratano’s lawyers, said “[t]here is noth­ing in the phys­i­cal evi­dence that links Joe to the mur­ders.… The prosecution’s whole case hinged on Joe’s con­fes­sions, which were total non­sense.” Leading experts on false con­fes­sions con­clud­ed in 2001 that there was ​“not a shred of sig­nif­i­cant or cred­i­ble phys­i­cal evi­dence sup­port­ing the con­clu­sion that Joseph Giarratano’s con­tra­dic­to­ry and incon­sis­tent con­fes­sions are reli­able” and that con­sid­er­able evi­dence led to ​“the con­clu­sion that his con­fes­sions are false.” 

While on death row, Giarratano became an avid read­er and an advo­cate for oth­er con­demned pris­on­ers, assist­ing in the exon­er­a­tion of Earl Washington, a wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled man who came with­in eight days of exe­cu­tion. Giarranto was also the named par­ty in a U.S. Supreme Court case, Murray v. Giarratano, in which Giarratano and oth­ers chal­lenged Virginia’s fail­ure to pro­vide post-con­vic­tion attor­neys for con­demned pris­on­ers. The Court ruled 5 – 4 against the prisoners. 

Following his trans­fer off death row to the Augusta Correctional Center, Giarratano helped found the Center for Teaching Peace, a peace edu­ca­tion pro­gram for pris­on­ers. The state parole board­’s deci­sion marks the first time in mod­ern Virginia his­to­ry that a defen­dant whose death sen­tence was com­mut­ed was granted parole. 

Richmond lawyer Stephen A. Northup rep­re­sent­ed Giarratano before the parole board and said, ​“For all the rea­sons that caused Governor Wilder to give Joe a con­di­tion­al par­don more than 26 years ago, I believe Joe is inno­cent of the crimes for which he was convicted.”