At around 7 p.m. on July 17, 1982, a 24-year-old woman, identified as K.G., was taking a shortcut home from a shopping center in Hanover, Virginia, when she encountered a young Black man lying on his side in the middle of the path, holding his knee. As she approached the man, assuming he was injured and intending to help him, he jumped up, grabbed her, and carried her off into nearby woods. There K.G. was robbed, raped twice, sodomized, forced to ingest her own feces, urinated on, and beaten.
During the attack, the man threatened K.G. with a gun but never showed a weapon. He told K.G., who was white, that she was being punished for the historical subjugation of Black people. He also said that she reminded him of his white girlfriend. About two hours later, the man left K.G. in the woods, abandoning a bicycle nearby.
K.G. staggered back to the shopping center and found some of her neighbors to call an ambulance.
At a hospital, a rape kit was taken. She was interviewed by an officer with the Ashland Police Department and an investigator with the Hanover County Sheriff’s Office. She said her attacker had a medium complexion, a thin mustache, and that she had scratched him. Her description was used to create a composite image. K.G. also told the officers that the attacker had spoken of a white girlfriend.
The officers immediately focused on 18-year-old Marvin Anderson because he was one of the only Black men in the vicinity known to be romantically involved with a white woman. Because Anderson had no criminal record, the investigators visited his workplace and obtained his employee photograph.
They then presented a photographic lineup at K.G.’s home. The photograph of Anderson was in color. The other photographs were black and white.
K.G. became agitated at the sight of Anderson’s picture and said that he was her assailant.
Not long after, the police picked up Anderson and put him in two consecutive lineups at the Hanover County Jail. K.G. viewed both and identified him as her attacker. Anderson had a dark complexion, no mustache, and no scratches. He was arrested on July 20, 1982 on charges of sexual assault, sodomy, kidnapping and robbery.
On December 14, 1982, Anderson went to trial in Hanover County Circuit Court. The trial lasted five hours.
The prosecution based its case almost exclusively on K.G.’s testimony. She described her harrowing attack in painstaking detail.
Mary Jane Burton, an analyst at the Virginia Bureau of Forensic Science, testified that her analysis of semen and blood was inconclusive.
Anderson’s mother, two neighbors, and his girlfriend, testified that he was at his mother’s home, washing his car, at the time of the attack.
From the very beginning of the case, people in the community believed Anderson was innocent and that the most likely suspect was another Black man, 22-year-old John Otis Lincoln. Prior to the trial, two witnesses, neither of whom were called to testify at the trial, had told Anderson’s mother that they saw Lincoln riding a bicycle near the scene of the attack. He had passed two white girls and made sexually suggestive comments. The witnesses said that they yelled at Lincoln and that he yelled back that if he wanted sex, “he asked for it and if they didn’t give it to him, he would just take it.” The witnesses said that they last saw Lincoln riding toward the shopping center along the path where the victim was attacked.
Other neighbors of the Anderson family reported to them that they had learned that after Anderson was arrested, Lincoln drove by the family home because he wanted to “see the young boy who was taking his rap.”
In 1981, Lincoln had served time in jail for an attack and in the spring of 1982, prior to the attack on K.G., Lincoln had been charged with sexually assaulting a female student at Randolph Macon College in Ashland. He was out on bond at the time of the attack of K.G.
The bicycle that K.G. described as being used by her attacker had been recovered and identified by the owner, who said that Lincoln had stolen it from him approximately 30 minutes before the rape. Although Anderson requested that his attorney call both the owner of the bicycle and Lincoln as witnesses, the attorney declined to do so.
That afternoon, the all-white jury convicted Anderson of all the charges. The jury imposed the maximum sentence of 210 years in prison.
Several months later, Lincoln was convicted of the rape of the college student and was sentenced to 23 years in prison.
In 1987, Anderson filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that his trial attorney had provided ineffective assistance of counsel. The motion said that at the time of the trial, his lawyer had failed to disclose that he had previously represented Lincoln, which was a conflict of interest. That motion was denied.
Anderson filed a state petition for a writ of habeas corpus and in 1988, Lincoln came forward and admitted his involvement in the crime in an effort to clear Anderson. At the hearing in August 1988 in Hanover County Circuit Court, Lincoln testified and offered details of the crime. Judge Richard Taylor said Lincoln was a liar and denied the petition in July 1989.
In 1993, with his appeals expired, a coalition of civil rights groups, church leaders, and members of the state legislature petitioned then-Governor L. Douglas Wilder for a pardon. The request was denied.
In the years after his conviction, after DNA testing became widely available, Anderson sought testing. His lawyers were told by the police, prosecution, and the court that the rape kit and its contents had been destroyed.
Anderson then contacted the Innocence Project, and his case was accepted in 1994.
On June 18, 1997, Anderson was released on parole which was to last for his lifetime.
In 2001, Dr. Paul Ferrara, Director of the Virginia Department of Forensic Science, advised the Innocence Project that certain physical evidence from the case, including sperm and semen samples recovered from the victim's body, had been located in Burton’s laboratory notebook. Had Burton followed policy and returned the partially used swabs to the rape kit, all evidence in this case would have been forever lost.
The Innocence Project contacted the Commonwealth Attorney for Hanover County, who agreed that Ferrara’s laboratory should conduct DNA tests on the evidence.
In April 2001, however, Ferrera declined to do so, citing a high caseload of pending cases and “the potential for establishing an unwelcome precedent.” Ferrara said the department would permit postconviction scientific testing “only upon a defendant’s attorney showing ample cause for the court or the Governor’s Office to order such testing.”
In May 2001, Virginia enacted a new law that permitted individuals convicted of a felony to ask for a court order to obtain DNA testing of previously untested scientific evidence. Anderson’s lawyers filed a request under the statute and obtained a court order for testing in the fall of 2001.
On December 6, 2001, the results excluded Anderson as the perpetrator. Because the evidence was heavily degraded, the profile obtained was limited to four DNA markers. When the profile was run against Virginia’s convicted offender DNA database, two inmate profiles were suggested, one of whom was Lincoln.
On August 21, 2002, Virginia Governor Mark Warner granted Anderson an absolute pardon. He had spent 15 years in prison and five years on parole fighting to prove his innocence.
Over the next three years, more defendants in Virginia were exonerated by DNA testing performed on biological material from rape kit swabs and pieces of cloth preserved in Burton’s files. In 2005, Governor Warner ordered testing of biological evidence from 1973 through 1988 that could be found in Burton’s files.
In 2003, the Virginia Legislature approved a lump sum compensation payment to Anderson of $200,000 plus $40,000 annually for life.
By the end of 2019, 13 other men—also had been exonerated as a result of the testing of evidence in Burton’s files.
Learn more about the other defendants wrongfully convicted due to Burton’s actions by clicking here.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 08-29-2011
Last Update Date: 03-20-2026
