Innocent man spent decades in Virginia prison for death of 3-year-old. He gets millions
Ten days after the birth of his first child, a Virginia man was ripped away from his family in what would become the longest wrongful incarceration case in the state’s history.
Now — more than five decades later — Marvin Grimm Jr. will get $5.8 million from the state, according to a new bill signed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin on Monday, March 24.
Grimm was a 20-year-old Navy veteran, fresh off a 9-hour work shift, when Richmond police officers took him in for 10 hours of unrecorded questioning on Dec. 16, 1975, according to court records.
Weeks before, on Nov. 26, the body of a three-year-old boy that lived in the same apartment building as Grimm and his wife had been found nine miles away on the banks of the James River after having been reported missing four days prior, according to court records.
An autopsy revealed grisly details in the child’s death — including that he died from choking after being sexually assaulted and that he had “high amounts” of drugs and alcohol in his body at the time of his death.
While no evidence had linked Grimm to the child — aside from proximity and arguments he’d had with the child’s father — he was convicted in 1976 on murder, abduction and sodomy charges, according to court records.
It is now believed that Grimm was coerced to make a confession and plead guilty, and that evidence was withheld to support his plea, according to court records. Three days prior to his guilty plea, evidence was made available to the Commonwealth that should have dropped all charges.
“Had Richmond and Commonwealth officials not intentionally withheld exonerating evidence, intentionally mischaracterized evidence, and intentionally and falsely threatened the death penalty which was not available, Mr. Grimm would not have been charged with or convicted of these horrific crimes,” the recently signed bill reads.
Grimm exonerated
Grimm tried to prove his innocence over the course of his 44 years in prison and throughout his time on parole.
DNA testing in 2002, 2012 and 2013 excluded Grimm as the source of all DNA profiles, according to the bill. Still, he was denied parole 26 times.
He filed two petitions for a writ of actual innocence based on new evidence, but they were both denied, according to The Innocence Project.
Grimm came close to giving up in 2017, The New York Times reported. According to an interview, he told God: “If you’re going to let me out, let me out. If you’re going to keep me in, keep me in. I’m not going to stop worshiping you.”
Then, after filing a third petition in 2023, the Virginia Court of Appeals on June 18, 2024, granted it, according to officials.
“Modern DNA and toxicology evidence excluded Mr. Grimm from any involvement in the death of the three-year-old victim,” the court said in a Jun. 18 news release.
Compensation set
According to Virginia law, people who are wrongfully incarcerated can be given up to $55,000 per year spent in prison; that number is adjusted annually by an inflation factor and is currently at about $63,000, Del. Rip Sullivan, who introduced the bill for Grimm’s compensation, told McClatchy News.
However, because of a separate statutory provision that increases the compensation amount when it’s found that members of law enforcement purposefully manufacture or withhold evidence leading to a conviction — like in Grimm’s case — Grimm’s compensation is doubled to a total of $5.8 million, Sullivan explained.
Then, the locality in which Grimm was wrongfully convicted will match it, Sullivan said, adding that Grimm will receive between $11 and $12 million in total compensation.
Sullivan said one of the most heartbreaking parts of Mr. Grimm’s story is not only that his son had become estranged from him, but regarded him as a convicted child killer.
“It’s unimaginable for any of us to try to think about what it would be like to spend one’s entire adult life in prison for a crime that you didn’t commit,” Sullivan said. “These stories are always heartbreaking, and I was glad that Mr. Grimm got a chance to tell his story.”
This story was originally published March 26, 2025 at 11:33 AM with the headline "Innocent man spent decades in Virginia prison for death of 3-year-old. He gets millions."
