2 Decades Behind Bars for Wrongful Murder Conviction: The Fairbanks Four

[Music] my father went to prison when I was about uh was probably like six years old and I came in seeing him behind the Barry glass that my daughter came to see me behind this very same glass it is all I remember was crying for him and asking for him to come home when he's gonna come home he didn't give me an answer just like I didn't give her an answer I didn't know what it meant and still don't know what it means now what the for forgive them for they know not what they do that's about it you know and that's the best you can hope for right that's the most ideal optimism you can have as forgive them for they know not what they've done [Music] [Music] two decades ago a teenager lost his life four young men lost their freedom and the Alaska Native community rose up against the justice system that claimed to protect them after spending 18 years in prison for the murder of Fairbanks teen John Hartman the group of men known as the Fairbanks four were released from custody [Music] this story starts late at night on October 11th in 1997 the Fairbanks Police Department received a call that a teenage boy had been found unconscious lying on a street corner downtown beaten beyond recognition his name was John Hartman and he died in the hospital later the next day he was 15 the brutal crime sent shockwaves through the community and the police rushed to find answers within 48 hours the case was said to be solved with the announcement of the arrest of for native teenagers Marvin Roberts Kevin Pease George fries and Eugene bent they were said to have spent the night driving around town together on a spree of random violence that culminated in the beating of John Hartman over the past four years I've been traveling around the world amplifying the stories of indigenous peoples fight for freedom and justice I wanted to find out why these four men lost half their lives to prison and how the unwavering determination of the people of Alaska was able to bring them home I'm on my way to the university of fairbanks to meet with Brian O'Donoghue he's been working on this case for almost 20 years he early on in the case noticed inconsistencies and worked with his students to really dive in to all of the details and crack open this case I actually worked down at the local newspaper and we kept getting letters from readers out on the yukon villages and fact-checking those letters has really got what got me started when I started teaching I was assigned to do investigative reporting and I thought this is great you know we're gonna do a project and we will settle questions about the case and I thought I would take a semester and in that first semester was there something that happened that really kept you going there um you know the sense of frustration that we had not got clear answers one of the hallmarks of this case was you had lots of teenagers moving around town on a night that was just a big party everywhere because of Permanent Fund dividends had come out back when oil first started flowing through the pipeline they put a portion of the earnings from that into like a state savings account for every single person in Alaska and when those checks are issued that weekend that followed was historically just filled with you know craziness so a lot of those kids were partying all four of them were kind of moving to some extent in different circles with different friends many of whom were drunk many of whom have completely conflicting estimates of time and sorting through a reliable timeline was one of the chief things that we were working on for several years I think when I wrote about this I described it as a wild night downtown and the night that Hartman was killed that night a wedding reception was being held at the old Eagles hall downtown one of the few details known for certain is that all four boys stopped in at the party at some point during the night what I can tell you is that Marvin Roberts just won a few people in that crowd that has a car and Marvin Roberts spends that night essentially giving people rides to and from a wedding reception downtown Eugene and Kevin Pease start the night and a party outside of town and split up after coming back into town and Eugene is kind of around the reception when a motel was having trouble with kids partying in one of the rooms and the guy called the police repeatedly about this and he said that one of them had that he'd just been assaulted fleeing that Eugene vent is stopped by police about five blocks away and that seems like kind of a lucky break because about four blocks away five blocks away police are investigating the crime scene at that point of this presumed fatal assault on Hartman and that kind of takes the investigation off one whole direction Kevin Pease he is known to have been involved in a trashing his mom's house and she reports him to police that he's here in trashing my house and when the police first picked Kevin up the next day I think he lies to them about having an alibi and you know that's all they need George is parting with a different group of friends and from about 10 o'clock on in that night he is losing a drinking game and when they stumble kind of downtown to the wedding reception he is just wasted and he hurts his foot likely in a scuffle maybe by that Motel it's it's uncertain but in any event he shows up at the hospital the next afternoon complaining about hurting his his ankle in a fight that he's too drunk to recall and he sort of opened himself up to leaving police to fit the details together and so they're all in custody by Sunday night you do get confessions to the murder from George and Eugene and that's what sets the police investigation rolling and so what you saw was about six months later nothing is panning out in the physical evidence and they never let doubt cause them to sort of back up and look at alternatives the four had been out of prison for two years when I went to Fairbanks well Eugene and Kevin were unable to participate we interviewed George and Marvin I lived here from maybe first grade to sixth grade and we live in about this one right here a lot of good memories it's I didn't realize then but this is these is that this is actually a poor side of town so there are a lot of natives in this area seems like there is yeah this is actually where they say that picked up eugene bent right cuz you are basically the the driver for everyone that night right the DD well I wasn't a driver for anyone really it's just I was rolling around with my friends for a lot of the night and every now and then I'd give somebody a ride but at no time were kevin eugene or george in my car that night so it's pretty confusing how they put all four of us together it was all like that kind of like a nightmare when I first began it's like I feels like in a zombie state you know you can't believe can't believe it you know like it shocked we'd be walking in handcuffs and shackles the media blew it up they fed whatever the cops and the prosecutors were saying about us they blew it up like they're heating it up and it's almost like we didn't even have a chance you know I knew them from just kind of growing up in this same small community and nothing about it made sense we heard you know that George had been arrested for beating up some young white kid that that kid had died and that he'd been arrested you know it's Marvin Roberts and Eugenia and Kevin Pease and it just on every conceivable level it doesn't make sense a story that involved the four of them in a car they didn't make sense social sense you know so just immediately it was like no Nina George didn't do that that's just period and then what came after that was the information that they confessed [Music] you know if you go through the transcripts I think 11 or 12 hours into interrogation when you gene finally goes okay maybe you know and then immediately I mean within a moment saying you know what I don't even remember any of that I didn't you know you're trying to put stuff in my head George who's so drunk that he was blacked out the night before they essentially kind of latched on to that and said well if you don't just go ahead and admit that you probably kicked him a couple of times we're gonna have no choice but to put you away after enough hours George kind of gets this point of like so okay you know I guess maybe I kicked him but I think that individually people who knew each of them well we're kind of thinking the same thing just you know there's no way and did you know Arlo Olson only very peripherally yeah a few days after John Hartman's fatal beating a native teenager named Arlo Olson told police that he'd seen Kevin George Eugene and Marvin rob someone while he was standing on the steps of the old Eagles Hall it was pretty dark but then their lights out in the parking lot [Music] this is where the state's star witness was somewhere on these steps he'd come out of the hot wedding and he claims that he heard someone say hey look fight the distance from where he was standing to where this robbery you know took place what was unclear through the grand jury proceedings and it's not till the third trial that we find out that an officer did what we're gonna do today which is measure the distance and it was about 550 feet yeah and the idea that you could be in a situation where someone is accusing you of something serious and it's based upon observations made at under conditions like this is you just have to see it to believe it right here yep now look back there just the idea that the guy could see and identify people at this distance at night after drinking for hours it should have been dismissed on his face and the idea that four people lost their Liberty you know essentially because this is is just unbelievable and so our llywydd this is a robbery that has in itself nothing to do with Hartman's murder but Arlo's observations of that robbery are what is used to sort of build the whole state's case that like it was a spree of random violence that began with this one robbery and continued a half mile later with the assault on Hartman not long after the verdicts were on place he's wavering and at the time of the Hartman case he had some pending charges related to assaults on women when he millenniums drinking and um you know I always look to see if that really gave them the detectives leverage and he told me an over a period of interviews that he wasn't really sure what he saw dollars break with you know perjury that I was threatened was going to jail and them sending the truth without me over the years I think the state's reliance on Arlo Olson who was native had racist implications in that even in the the jurors sort of were inclined to credit this guy's account more because he was testifying against one of his own [Music] I'm here to meet with Yvonne Peter Yvonne became the chief of his community when he was just 24 and he is now the vice chancellor of the university of fairbanks so did you follow the case when you were growing up you know there were there was a lot that everybody followed in you know from the Austin native community locally people were just outraged and in disbelief it felt like this would never happen if it was not Alaska native or maybe African American people like they wouldn't be doing this if it was for non-native people white people I think for most of us including myself who was kind of like alright you know there'll be a chance for them to appeal and then an appeal that will finally get some justice to kind of out of it but each time you know then it started to feel like there was gonna be some progress then it then nothing happened people were just not willing to look at the facts and accept the fact that these boys are innocent it was another one of those awakening moments you know for our people that there is still you know institutionalized racism that exists in Alaska native men only make up 8% of Alaska's population yet they account for 36 percent of the male prison population in the state how many said you know what the evidence should pointed at my dad supporters out there I believe my heart I know my art and I know God knows it amuses but there is points today in the future what was that first night like it was no sleep I mean pretty sad I mean is first night in jail you cried a couple times wondering why I was there prayed about it Tom just loses this essence I mean like in prison you are just in a mode every day is the same you eat breakfast every day at the same time you lunch every day at the same time you eat dinner right every day at the same time and then time just goes by and weeks it just takes out a whole other perspective probably that year after we got convicted that would have been the hardest year because we knew we were stuck for years but what helped was I had a lot of family support I also had the other three the Fairbanks four as we're called now like I said we weren't called at Fairbanks for back then we were just young men fighting for our lives you know you couldn't ask for any for greater people to just become automatically cohesive automatic I mean there was not a day you know that uh we know we didn't have each other's back not a day in my mind you know another day and it still is like that to me you know absolutely we knew our family our family believed us you know and of course we always knew that everybody's gonna find out the truth so there was always a sense of you know our community has her back for years they have sat squandering their life because people in positions of authority did not do their job properly this is your son Daniel yes so he was in prison with them Wow okay that's what led me into prison ministry Reverend Shirley Lee runs the tribal association that oversees the Native villages of interior Alaska she began advocating for the Fairbanks for in 2007 many people thought that the police had airtight evidence against the four and then the information started coming out false confession fabricated evidence at trial and what was it like in the very beginning how long did it take you to get people to really start listening when I started the case and we're holding rallies and trying to get people and people were coming together there was two audiences that I worked with one was through my leadership role with the Native organizations the second audience though was the general public and the tribes and that was a harder group to work with and to get the message out the other thing is that this wonderful young lady named April came to me after one of our rallies and said I grew up with the boys can I help you she was able to get the message out and bring in a younger group to the cause I just thought you know what I can tell this story so started the Fairbanks four blog I think the very first entry said this isn't this is an act of faith belief in the truth I'm going to tell this long complicated heartbreaking story and you know believe it will go exactly where it's meant to and it's just snowballed into more and more attention and you know that attention thankfully it was able both to locate information for the Alaska Innocence Project and also to find the Alaska Innocence Project who in turn took on this impossible task like a guy in an office took that on it's pretty crazy in May 2009 after a decade of failed Appeals the Alaska Innocence Project executive director bill overly agreed to take on the case I believe there were six or seven appeals in the cases and every appeal lost so the the support never waned but I imagine a wobble it had to be difficult because court was providing them no no relief governor walker on behalf of the board of directors and all of the delegation here we have a very important message for you three the Fairbanks four [Applause] when George drove me back said yeah please take out my case I alator found out that that was one of his darkest moments he said you know I'm here we've gone through all those Appeals and my hope got up it was - my hope cut up it was dashed and here my hopes getting up again and I'm just afraid we didn't know about the confession at that point the state did they didn't do anything when I found out I went and investigate two years into his investigation bill found out about an off-the-record confession that had been made by an inmate in 2003 Jason Wallace who was serving time for murders in connection with drug trafficking told a public defender that he and his accomplice William Holmes were responsible for the murder of john hartman story was Jason Wallace had been arrested for the murder that he's now serving time on I'm up in Fairbanks and his public defender went in to see him and Jason said listen I have some information about the John Hartman case so I sent for investigators to try and get him to talk to us he wouldn't refuse so I figured we had to do this differently so I talked to Marvin said Marvin I'd like you to write a letter to William Holmes and say I'm in prison for a crime I didn't commit I understand you know something about it can you get ahold of my lawyer so Marvin sent the letter and I didn't hear anything from Holmes and then one day I got a little slip of paper in an envelope it said I need your phone number so I can call you signed William Holmes and like the heavens had opened up in gold and drop down ever since the fairbanks teenager was beaten to death in 1997 the four native men convicted of the crime have been fighting for their release while tonight it looks like their fight will continue it will be up to a judge to decide if there is a retrial [Music] this is of note at this point those guys were in prison for five subsequent murders five so if they had been pursued and arrested at that point it would have been different they just kept saying uh Little J was tricky and he stomped him out he was tripping he stomped him out so I looked over it uh Jason Wallace and I said man what happened he was just in his own kind of looking forward didn't respond there's no doubt in my mind the person that killed John Hartman is Jason Wallace he knows it and I know it the other particularly key evidence was testimony of our little awesome and what was really really significant is in this hearing in 2015 of all the new evidence Arlo came back and he reaffirmed what he told me in interviews and and you know good for him [Music] [Music] after five weeks of trial the court adjourned while hundreds of supporters stood by waiting on a verdict later that day the four reached a settlement with the state that allowed for their immediate release and absolve them of their convictions but as a condition to their release they had to sign away their right to sue the state in a lot of places I think the new evidence would have led a prosecutor to step forward and ask the court to dismiss charges that's the appropriate response even the terms of the settlement the this ludicrous sentence that says like no police officer or no prosecutor did anything wrong it's just part of a cover-up they deserve compensation for 18 lost years and the act of giving them compensation would be impetus for change so basically he said from the bench I'm gonna take a year or more to decide this case and the offer in the settlement was you can get out today Kevin had lost his mother George when he went in his daughter was four three four he now had a granddaughter three or four kind of a no-brainer [Music] [Applause] that was the quickest to two and a half hours of my life but it seemed it lasts forever and it was just an entire community that uh just had total emotional investment in who you are but you whatever it is we mean today whatever you know because they all know cuz ultimately it's about to him too you know [Music] that first time I got out he was almost like a day like this with less clouds everything was so baby at all the colors all the trees the little city trees they have like this all the colors were so vivid and it was beautiful walking that's a big thing after eighteen years you know it was like doesn't seem like you but when your my position thank you yeah can you tell me about the day that the Fairbanks four were released were you there yes I was there oh I was so wonderful we were just elated at the courthouse I'm gonna make me cry [Music] for them to go through re-entry basically it was kind of hard I mean I remember taking some of them shopping and having them stand in a grocery store aisle for like 20 minutes trying to figure out what candy bar to buy and then just leaving the grocery store because it was too overwhelming so they had to overcome a lot and for them at the same time to have people put them on a pedestal and hold them up as you know the shining example of righteousness probably was a little too overwhelming [Music] marvin was speaking at a graduation ceremony in the village of rampart close to where he grew up along the Yukon River he invited me to come along hey hey right this way I show no Marvin and base glitz or electro sterile are you gonna need me to meet in the morning yes please we're [Music] all right [Music] you spent all this time and of course it must have been really difficult but in that time did you find a way to find happiness oh yeah it was some in the beginning it was it was difficult to to be happier to think positive cuz we're just so engrossed in fighting this battle of and it was everything was just against us and there's a lot of negativity but throughout the years of i've ever gained my my peacefulness my positivity and and in prison I I became the man who I am today survived prison and try to think positive thoughts [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening friends family and of course the graduates I am extremely honored to be here on such a momentous occasion you will have many hardships in life but look to your sources of strength family friends God for a long time I was away from family and home but I always tried to think positive pay attention to time time could very well be the most most important thing you possess I think of time as a precious gift now that's what my speeches are so short so the number one piece of advice I can give all of you is to never ever give up there's journey we all live is about staying on your path and staying true to your path take care and may God bless you want your journeys thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] everybody's intentions are their own what everybody wants is their own you know all this is just you know what needs to be done what's needs to be said whatever but it is what it is life is just life how the why I'm here what was it all for except for to say someone crazy off-the-wall perspective right but it's only human you know [Music] you

Channel: VICE

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Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, interview, culture, lifestyle, world, exclusive, independent, underground, videos, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice videos, film, short films, movies, the fairbanks four, crime, murder, native, rights, ALASKA, criminal justice system, red right hand, law, wrongful convictions, Criminal Justice, innocence ignored, high school, murderer, youth, juvenile, death row, prison, jail, police, innocence project, wrongful conviction, criminal justice

Id: itCHf2LJ7HE

Length: 32min 14sec (1934 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 01 2018