In secret report to former governor, independent lawyer concluded Fairbanks Four were innocent

In a report kept secret by the state for years, an independent lawyer hired by former Gov. Bill Walker to review the Fairbanks Four case in 2015 concluded that the wrong men had been jailed for the 1997 killing of John Hartman.

“I have come to the firm belief,” wrote attorney James N. Reeves on October 1, 2015, “that the Fairbanks Four did not commit the crimes of which they were convicted. In other words, in my view the information I reviewed constitutes clear and convincing evidence that they are innocent.”

The existence of the report by Reeves, a former state prosecutor and attorney in private practice, did not become public until the federal civil rights lawsuit filed by the Fairbanks Four had been working its way through the courts for years. It is one of the dozens of exhibits filed in that case.

On Thursday, District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled that the civil rights lawsuit—which now features only one of the four men as a plaintiff, Marvin Roberts—should be allowed to proceed.

After a 2015 court proceeding, the state vacated the Fairbanks Four convictions, but only if the four men agreed to release the state and the city from liability. The current court case is about the validity of that waiver.

The 16-page Reeves report, while it is only one document from a mountain of paperwork, makes a compelling argument about key issues that should be dealt with out in the open at long last.

It strikes me as an impartial and fair account that tries to make sense of the conflicting scenarios about the crime. Only one of the scenarios can be true and that is the one that no juror ever heard before sending the four men to prison.

We will learn a lot more about the Fairbanks Four case, and younger people and those who didn’t live in Alaska a quarter-century ago will learn more about the case this spring when Brian O’Donoghue’s new book is due, “The Fairbanks Four: Murder, Injustice, and the Birth of a Movement.” On Friday, the Morris Thompson auditorium was filled as O’Donoghue reviewed some of the complicated history of this trauma.

The Reeves report is not the final word on this matter, but I think it should put to rest the belief—one that I shared for many years—that because there were three separate trials by three separate juries that led to the Fairbanks Four convictions, we can trust that justice was served. Life is rarely that simple. This situation is not that simple.

The Fairbanks Four juries did not know about Holmes and Wallace, who are behind bars for murders they committed years after Hartman was brutally kicked in the head near the intersection of Ninth Avenue and Barnette Street.

Here is the report by Reeves, who concluded that the evidence about Hartman’s murder uncovered long after the Fairbanks Four trials, evidence that ties William Holmes and Jason Wallace to the crime, is more believable than the case mounted against the Fairbanks Four. He notes that there are contradictions in statements by Holmes and Wallace, but there are also witnesses that back up various claims.

“There are reasons to question the veracity of nearly every lay witness in this case. As a discipline, I approached all of the information I received with deep skepticism,” Reeves wrote. “On balance, I have arrived at a firm belief that the Holmes/Wallace account is true. I believe that the materials I reviewed constitute clear and convincing evidence that the Fairbanks Four are innocent.”

The Reeves examination was produced, according to court documents, after Walker asked his chief of staff, Jim Whitaker, in August 2015 to find a special investigator to review the case. By the end of that month, Walker rural affairs advisor Gerad Godfrey recommended that the task be assigned to Reeves, who had been suggested by federal prosecutors.

Reeves said his conclusion was subject to “numerous important caveats.” He wrote that he could not do an investigation on his own with interviews because he had not been asked to and that would have been difficult or impossible.

“In the first place both the existence of this project and my engagement to do it are confidential,” he wrote. He had no official role in the case and he did not have subpoena power to compel anyone to do anything.

The only question he considered was whether the information he reviewed was enough to establish innocence by “clear and convincing evidence.” He said the answer was yes.

I’ll have more in a future blog post about what the court case has revealed regarding why Walker asked for a secret independent review of the case in the first place.

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