Alaska city will pay $11.5M for wrongful conviction
Richard Arlin WalkerSpecial to ICT
Marvin Roberts, an Athabascan man who spent nearly 18 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, reached an $11.5 million settlement with the City of Fairbanks, Alaska, and four former police officers.
The settlement, announced on March 25, is believed to be the largest settlement ever paid by the City of Fairbanks.
Roberts was one of four Indigenous young men arrested in 1997 for the beating death of John Hartman, a Fairbanks teenager. Advocates for the four men, who came to be known as the Fairbanks Four, saw their arrests as a racially biased rush to judgment (the officers that investigated Hartman's death and made the arrests are white).
The men – George Frese, Kevin Pease, Eugene Vent, and Roberts – were convicted despite witness testimony from alibi witnesses and that alleged they were elsewhere that evening, and the absence of DNA and other physical evidence connecting the young men to the crime. The case attracted the attention of journalist Brian O'Donoghue, a University of Alaska professor in Fairbanks, and Bill Oberly of the Alaska Innocence Project.
O'Donoghue's journalism students uncovered evidence of jury misconduct. The Alaska Innocence Project discovered evidence that police had buried – including a confession from a former Fairbanks resident serving a life sentence in California for a drug-related triple murder in 2002. An independent investigation by Alaska State Troopers determined the investigation by Fairbanks Police was poorly done and lacked any incriminating evidence.
The state vacated the convictions in 2015 and the men were freed. They later filed civil rights lawsuits against the four police officers – Jim Geier, Dave Kendrick, Chris Nolan and Aaron Ring – and the City of Fairbanks. Frese, Pease and Vent shared agreed to a settlement of $5 million they agreed to in 2024. Roberts declined the settlement, and his civil rights lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial in December 2025.
"The upcoming trial, the massive and irrefutable police misconduct, and the fact the four police officers finally admitted fault during their recent depositions were all factors that led to this settlement,' attorney Mike Kramer of Kramer and Cosgrove said in a statement released by his office.
'Marvin Roberts proved himself to be incredibly resilient and strong in his 28-year quest for justice and when it became clear to the City that he wasn't going to back down, they did what they should have done long ago and finally made up for some of the harms they inflicted. The City refused to publicly apologize, but the $11.5 million they agreed to pay reflects that they finally recognized they made terrible mistakes that sent an innocent man to prison.'
Roberts said in a statement released by Kramer and Cosgrove that no amount of money will be enough to justify what he endured as an innocent man. '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,' he said. 'I thank God for helping me through that ordeal.'
Roberts thanked his family, O'Donoghue, the Alaska Innocence Project, 'and all other family, friends and Fairbanks Four supporters who believed in me.'
The state Attorney General's office, which prosecuted the Fairbanks Four, recognized in 2015 that if the men were retried 'it is not clear' they would be convicted and agreed to vacate their convictions and release them from prison.
The City of Fairbanks has paid a total of $16.5 million to settle the Fairbanks Four's civil rights lawsuits.
And yet, there have been no admissions and no apologies from state and local officials.
Officers Geier, Kendrick, Nolan and Ring stayed on at the department and 'retired at different times over the last 25 years,' police department spokesman Teal Soden told ICT. 'Their departure from the department was not related to the John Hartman case at all.'
When the state attorney general's office vacated the convictions and freed the men in 2015, it pointed out that it was 'not an exoneration.'
When the City of Fairbanks settled in 2024 with Frese, Pease and Vent, it pointed out that the settlement 'was not an admission of liability or fault.'
And now, in Roberts' settlement, the City of Fairbanks 'refused to publicly apologize,' Kramer said. But, he said, 'The $11.5 million they agreed to pay reflects that they finally recognized they made terrible mistakes that sent an innocent man to prison.'
ICT reached out to Fairbanks Mayor David Pruhs and his chief of staff, Michael Sanders, on March 26 but received no reply by deadline. ICT also left a message for Brian Ridley, chief of the Tanana Chiefs Conference, which lobbied for a review of the Fairbanks Four's case and the men's eventual freedom, but also received no reply by deadline.
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