More than two decades ago, a jury found Terrence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne not guilty of murdering a police officer. But a judge disagreed, and unilaterally sentenced them to life in prison. After 22 years behind bars, their case is now in the hands of Virginia’s highest court, which will decide whether to allow the men to admit new evidence they say proves their innocence.
In 1998, Waverly police officer Allen Gibson was shot and killed with his own gun in the woods behind an apartment complex in the small town of less than 2,500 people. Evette Newby, who lived in the apartment complex facing the woods, told police she’d seen three men go into the woods. Then, she said, she saw two of them struggling with Gibson and heard a loud pop. She identified two of the men as Richardson and Claiborne. Newby also identified another man at the scene, but police told her it was impossible for that man to have been present because he was incarcerated. Newby later said law enforcement officials pressured her to say she saw Richardson shoot Gibson, which she would not agree to, and gave her small amounts of money.
There was no physical evidence linking Richardson and Claiborne to the crime, but they emerged as the primary suspects in the ensuing investigation, despite the fact that police had evidence suggesting another man may have been involved in: Leonard Newby, the witness’ brother. An attorney currently representing Richardson and Claiborne says the defense never knew police had evidence pointing to another suspect.
Richardson and Claiborne insisted they had nothing to do with Gibson’s death. But their attorneys at the time told them that they could be sentenced to death if they went to trial and lost. Richardson and Claiborne were poor Black men accused of killing a white police officer in the South. Out of fear for their lives, they took guilty pleas.
“He said if you go to trial and you mess around and you lose, you could get the death penalty,” Richardson told local news.
Richardson pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to ten years in state prison with five years suspended. Claiborne pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge, as an accessory to Richardson’s crime. The county attorney at the time, David Chappell, said he made those plea bargains with Richardson and Claiborne because the case was too compromised: One of the first officers to arrive on the scene was Waverly Police Chief Warren Sturrup, who picked up Gibson’s gun with his bare hands and, in doing so, tainted any fingerprints that may have been on the gun.
Gibson’s family was outraged by what they saw as a lenient sentence for Richardson and Claiborne, who, in their view, had pleaded guilty to being involved in Gibson’s death. Following public outcry, federal prosecutors brought additional charges against the pair accusing them of selling crack cocaine and murdering a police officer during a drug deal gone wrong.
In 2001, Richardson and Claiborne went to trial. A jury found them not guilty of officer Gibson’s murder, but guilty of selling crack.
But in an unusual move, District Judge Robert E. Payne sentenced Richardson and Claiborne to life in prison using “acquitted conduct sentencing,” a legal mechanism approved by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996. In that case, known as Watts, the court ruled that a jury’s acquittal does not prevent a judge from using the conduct the defendant was acquitted of against them when sentencing them for another charge.
“The Court’s decision to sentence Terrence and Ferrone to life in prison despite being found not guilty robbed due process of its very meaning,” said Jarrett Adams, Richardson and Claiborne’s attorney. “The U.S. Supreme Court must do away with its ruling in U.S. v Watts, which gives a judge the discretion to make a jury’s finding meaningless, and prevent further miscarriages of justice from occurring like the one we see in this case.”
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