Navy vet who admitted to killing and sexually assaulting child exonerated by DNA evidence

Background: WRIC YouTube footage shows the James River in Richmond, Virginia where the body of a 3-year-old boy was found in 1975. Inset: Marvin Grimm, after his recent exoneration for that boy

Background: WRIC YouTube footage shows the James River in Richmond, Virginia where the body of a 3-year-old boy was found in 1975. Inset: Marvin Grimm, after his recent exoneration for that boy’s murder. Photo courtesy of the Innocence Project.

After spending 44 years in prison for the abduction, murder and rape of a 3-year-old boy in 1975, Marvin Grimm has been exonerated by the Virginia Court of Appeals this week and granted a writ of innocence after scrutiny of DNA evidence proved, as the state’s attorney general advocated, that “no rational fact finder would have convicted him” of the heinous crime.

“Indeed, when considered as a whole, there remains no inculpatory evidence by which Grimm would be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” the court’s June 18 ruling stated. Grimm, as the New York Times noted this week, is among a rare group of Americans who has served some of the longest sentences in prison before exoneration. The only sentence longer is 48 years.

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