Juneau, Alaska (AP) – An Alaska native man who maintained his innocence in the 1997 murder of a white teenager has agreed to a $ 11.5 million agreement with Fairbanks’ city after alleating police acted with a racial bias in a case where he and another three natives spent almost two decades in prison.
Marvin Roberts is the last of the so -called Fairbanks Four to reach an agreement with the city after his murder sentences were vacant in 2015. While the agreement on its long -term civilian demand against the city and police officers were announced in late March, the parties formally requested a judge who dismissed the case of Roberts, citing the liquidation.
“I don’t think any money is enough to justify what I supported as an innocent man in prison,” Roberts said in a recent statement. “This settlement, however, gives me freedom with my life and, most importantly, more time with my daughter and my parents, who supported me throughout this nightmare.”
Fairbanks’ prosecutor Tom Chard confirmed that the city and its insurance carriers had agreed to a liquidation of $ 11.5 million. The terms of the agreement establish a fund release schedule, with the final payment due to October 1, 2026. The agreement stipulates that the liquidation “will not be interpreted as an admission of liability or responsibility” by the accused.
Nick Brustin, a member of the Roberts Legal Team with Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann and Freudenberger, Llp, a New York civil rights signature, in a statement called the agreement as “claiming Marvin Roberts’ innocence, which has maintained extraordinary dignity for almost three decay.”
The agreement comes almost 1/2 years after the other three men, George Freste, Eugene Vent and Kevin Pease, agreed to an agreement in which each had to receive $ 1.59 million from the city insurer. In this case, the city said that the settlement was not “an admission of responsibility or guilt of any kind.”
Alaska native leaders for a long time defended the release of men, saying that convictions were racically motivated. Pease is native American; Freste, wind and roberts are native to Athabascan Alaska. Roberts was the only one of the four of him on probation at the moment the sentences were launched.
A 2015 liquidation in a civilian case presented by men that caused the convictions to be launched following a hearing for a few weeks, re -examining the case and raised the possibility that others would have killed John Hartman, 15. While the four men kept their innocencesaid the Alaska Law Department the resolution It was not an exoneration.
Men would argue that the settlement that led to their release – which they agreed to not sue – was not legally binding because they were coerced. An appeal court he ruled in his favor.
Teal Soden, a spokesman for the Fairbanks Police Department, said that the agency lists Hartman’s slaughter as an “open/active” case.