Release of Former Virginia Death-Row Prisoner Delayed as Police Protest Grant of Parole

The release of a for­mer Virginia death-row pris­on­er has been delayed after police orga­ni­za­tions demand­ed an inquiry into the Virginia Parole Board deci­sion to grant parole to Vincent Lamont Martin (pic­tured), con­vict­ed of the 1979 mur­der of a Richmond police officer. 

Martin, who has been eli­gi­ble for parole for 26 years, had been sched­uled to be released on April 30, 2020 fol­low­ing a parole grant approved by a super­ma­jor­i­ty of the parole board ear­li­er in the month. News reports indi­cate that his release has been post­poned until May 11, 2020. 

In announc­ing the parole board’s deci­sion on April 14, Board Chair Adrianne L. Bennett expressed doubts about Martin’s con­vic­tion, say­ing his tri­al had been taint­ed by ​“a dark cloud of injus­tice.” Martin’s pros­e­cu­tor, she said, had with­held evi­dence from the defense in the case and his law license was lat­er sus­pend­ed for eth­i­cal vio­la­tions in oth­er cas­es. Bennett said that in his more than 40 years of incar­cer­a­tion, Martin had grown into ​“a trust­ed leader, peace­mak­er, medi­a­tor and men­tor in the correctional community.” 

Martin was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in February 1980 for the mur­der of police offi­cer Michael P. Connors dur­ing a rou­tine traf­fic stop. The tri­al occurred less than 90 days after the mur­der, pro­vid­ing defense coun­sel vir­tu­al­ly no time to pre­pare a defense. The Virginia Supreme Court over­turned Martin’s con­vic­tion in October 1980 as a result of the tri­al court’s refusal to remove for cause a juror who said she would require Martin to prove his inno­cence, say­ing the juror’s views were ​“repug­nant to a sense of fair­ness and … indica­tive of an ingrained and tena­cious bias against one accused of crime.” 

The tri­al court denied Martin’s court-appoint­ed lawyer fund­ing to inves­ti­gate the case and expe­dit­ed the retri­al, which was held in December 1980. During the rushed retri­al, Bennett said, the judge ​“kept jurors until late into the night …, one juror col­lapsed from exhaus­tion and anoth­er was rushed to the hos­pi­tal.” Martin was con­vict­ed again, but this time the jury sen­tenced him to life with the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. 

According to Bennett’s state­ment for the Parole Board, Martin’s con­vic­tion was ​“based pri­mar­i­ly upon the con­flict­ing tes­ti­mo­ny of coop­er­at­ing co-defen­dants” who had con­fessed to par­tic­i­pat­ing in Officer Connors’ mur­der in exchange for lenient sen­tences that Bennett described as ​“tan­ta­mount to a slap on the wrist.” The pros­e­cu­tion with­held from the defense evi­dence of the favor­able treat­ment the co-defen­dants received and pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny they had not been promised any­thing for their tes­ti­mo­ny. They com­plet­ed their sen­tences in the 1980s and ear­ly 1990s and were released. 

The parole grant ignit­ed a firestorm from Virginia’s law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty, with the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police call­ing it ​“a slap in the face to every law enforce­ment offi­cer in Virginia.” Richmond Police Chief William Smith issued a state­ment say­ing he was ​“per­son­al­ly dis­mayed” by the parole board’s action. ​“I know that all Richmond police offi­cers, past and present, expect that their lives and sac­ri­fices would car­ry more weight and val­ue in soci­ety than to allow this person’s release.” 

In a let­ter to Governor Ralph Northam, the chiefs’ asso­ci­a­tion demand­ed that Northam issue an order pre­vent­ing Martin’s release and “[d]irect that an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion be con­duct­ed into the process” by which the board grant­ed Martin parole. The let­ter false­ly assert­ed that Martin’s death sen­tence had been over­turned “[d]ue to a tech­ni­cal error in instruc­tions to the jury” and erro­neous­ly assert­ed that it had been ​“changed to life in prison” on appeal. 

Bennett accused the police orga­ni­za­tions of con­duct­ing a ​“pres­sure cam­paign” to stop Martin’s release in an envi­ron­ment in which ​“facts don’t mat­ter.” In an email, she wrote: ​“The Parole Board’s deci­sion is final. There is no author­i­ty to block it …. The Parole Board has ful­ly com­plied with its pol­i­cy. There is no space for pres­sure cam­paigns in a bal­anced crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. This Parole Board makes deci­sions impar­tial­ly, not based on threats.” 

A few days lat­er, the state qui­et­ly delayed Martin’s release date. 

Martin is the sec­ond for­mer death-row pris­on­er to have been grant­ed parole in Virginia. Joseph M. Giarratano, who had a strong claim of inno­cence in his case, was grant­ed parole in 2017.