Episode 222: The Exoneration of Marvin Mitchell
On September 22nd, 1988, an 11-year-old girl ran home and told her mom that on her way to the school bus stop that morning from her Roxbury, Massachusetts home, a man had attacked her and sexually assaulted her. The girl had been dragged off the street and behind a house on Crawford Street where the man raped her vaginally and orally. She was able to give an incredibly in depth description of the man as she said she had seen him in the neighborhood almost every day for about two years. He was tall with a slim build, a Black male with lighter skin, short hair, no facial hair and he looked like he could be in his late teens or early 20’s. She also said that she noticed he was cross-eyed and that he was wearing pink colored pants and a red and white shirt with a logo or emblem of some kind on it as well as black writing.
The girl’s mom quickly brought her to the police station where she relayed all of this information to an officer before being taken to Boston City Hospital’s pediatric emergency unit for an evaluation, assessment and a rape kit. The girl and her mom also talked to a detective with the Boston Police’s Sexual Assault Unit. The next morning on September 23rd, the girl was driven around her neighborhood to see if she could spot anyone who matched the description of the man who had raped her. Standing on Humboldt Avenue in Roxbury was a man named Marvin Mitchell. Marvin was a decently tall height with a slim build, and he looked to be a lighter skinned Black man who could be in his early 20’s. He was even wearing a sweatshirt with a large red and white logo on it.
Where the description of the assailant and Marvin seriously differed is that Marvin was not wearing pink pants, he was not cross-eyed and he was not clean shaven. He had both a noticeable mustache and a goatee. Officers Trent Holland and Robin DeMarco were partners at the Area B Police Station, and both officers typically worked on drug related cases. The two officers spotted Marvin and they arrested him for public drinking. This was unfounded, and interestingly of the charges he was prosecuted for, the public drinking charge was not one of them. Once at the police station, Marvin was interrogated on what clothing he had been wearing the day prior, which Marvin said were the same grey pants he was wearing at the police station.
The officers claimed Marvin admitted to wearing pink pants, but did not fill out an incident report or report this alleged admission to the Sexual Assault Unit. They did tell the Sexual Assault Unit that they believed Marvin Mitchell could be the perpetrator. They then made plans for the girl and her mom to come down to the station to look through a book of photos of hundreds of men who had been arrested for prior crimes to see if she recognized any of them. Among the photos was Marvin’s, not because he had a prior record, but because the officers took his Polaroid photo as well as his fingerprints at the station which is not standard procedure for an arrest for drinking in public. The girl was asked to choose someone out of a photo array, and out of both arrays of eight different photos, she chose Marvin each time. Marvin later said that the photo arrays included other men who clearly looked different than him, influencing the girl’s decision in inaccurately choosing him. Marvin was then arrested for the attack and rape.
As the questioning had not followed police procedure, the typical next steps of obtaining a warrant to search Marvin’s home for the pink pants and other evidence were also not followed. On November 4th, 1988, a grand jury came back with a four count indictment. Two counts were of unnatural sexual intercourse with a minor and two were of forced sexual intercourse with a minor. During the legal proceedings, a Sexual Assault Unit detective gave a summary of the evidence, which did not include Marvin admitting that he had been wearing pink pants the day of the rape and attack. After the indictment but before the trial, officers Holland and DeMarco received Commissioner's Commendations, an award of honor for police officers, for their work in catching Marvin.
The court proceedings were incredibly problematic as in December of 1989, just one month before the trial started, Officer Holland had reached out to Assistant District Attorney Leslie O'Brien, the prosecutor for the case, and finally revealed that Marvin admitted to wearing pink pants on the day of the attack. Officer Holland also said that Marvin made multiple other incriminating statements that he didn’t document or recall, but he reassured the Assistant District Attorney that as soon as he saw Marvin in person in trial it would all come back to him and he would remember. Officer Holland was then identified as a witness in the case against Marvin. The timing of this was highly suspicious as Marvin recently gave a blood sample that showed there was no match between his blood and a sample of blood and semen found on the girl’s sweatshirt.
On January 18th, 1990 during the trial, prosecution called to the stand David Brody of the Boston Police Crime Lab. David said that despite the sample not matching Marvin’s blood type, the forensic evidence did not officially rule him out as a suspect. He stated, “Mr. Mitchell could not be excluded. No secretor could be excluded from depositing that stain because the stain may have been too diluted or graded to pick up Mr. Mitchell’s blood type. So I cannot exclude him, but I cannot say that I found the A blood group type.” As the tests revealed blood group markers identical to the girl’s, her blood could be “masking” the perpetrator’s and preventing it from being detected.
The judge had ordered a voir dire examination of Officer Holland to ensure Officer Holland was an appropriate, unbiased and honest witness. During this examination, Officer Holland testified that while he was asking Marvin the standard booking questions such as name, address, social security number, etc., Marvin gave the admission that he was wearing pink pants the day prior on the day of the rape. Judge Todd then expressed doubts that Marvin made this statement after he had been read his Miranda rights and delayed his ruling to the next day after ordering the court be adjourned. After court had adjourned, Officer Holland told the Assistant District Attorney that his partner, Officer DeMarco, was there at the time and could back up his testimony.
On January 19th, 1990, two local newspapers published articles that Officer Holland had been cited in a recent scandal of possibly having committed perjury in a very high profile and ongoing case at this time, the Charles Stuart case. Based on now being accused of perjury in a high profile case, everyone agreed that Officer Holland’s testimony should be stricken from the record. Earlier this same morning, Officer Holland’s partner Officer DeMarco met with Assistant District Attorney O’Brien. She then was called to testify in Officer Holland’s place. She claimed that as Marvin was being booked, she and some other officers were talking about how it’s not uncommon for people to wear the same clothes every day or a couple days in a row when Marvin suddenly blurted out, “I didn't have these clothes on yesterday ... I had pink pants on."
In January of 1990, Marvin Mitchell was sentenced to 9 to 25 years in prison. The jury had deliberated for two days before deciding he was guilty of two of the four counts: one count of forced sexual intercourse with a minor and one count of unnatural sexual intercourse with a minor. While incarcerated, Marvin lost both his brother and his mother and wasn’t able to be with his loved ones following their deaths and during the grieving process. He always maintained his innocence and vowed to prove this in his brother and mother’s memory.
In 1995, Marvin reached out to a new attorney David Kelston, who along with lawyer Noah Rosmarin took the case pro bono. They petitioned the court to grant them access to the rape kit as well as grant them permission to perform DNA testing on the semen and blood samples that had been collected from the girl’s sweatshirt. The court granted permission and in February of 1997, CellMark Laboratories completed testing that could show more in depth evidence with the advances in DNA technology. The new testing revealed that Marvin was conclusively excluded as the source of DNA found on the sweatshirt. They moved for a retrial. On April 23th, 1997, Superior Court Judge Guy Voltera allowed Marvin’s motion for a new trial. The District Attorney's Office decided not to prosecute a second time, and a month later on May 23rd, 1997, Marvin Mitchell became the first person in the state of Massachusetts to have a conviction overturned based on DNA evidence. He was exonerated after serving seven years and three months in prison.
Image sources:
innocenceproject.org - “Marvin Mitchell”