Minnesota man wrongfully convicted of murder freed from life sentence
A man convicted of murdering a Minnesota flower shop clerk largely based on a single eyewitness identification has been freed from a sentence of life imprisonment, elating his supporters and him but outraging the slain victim’s family.
Marvin Haynes was 16 when the killing which sent him to prison for nearly two decades unfolded in 2004 in Minneapolis. His release comes amid the implementation of court-mandated reforms to the local police department, prompted in part by a former officer’s murder of George Floyd in 2020.
After leaving prison on Monday, Haynes received a formal apology from the local district attorney, who said prosecutors had no forensic evidence, surveillance video or murder weapon linking him to the deadly shooting of 55-year-old Randy Sherer, the news station KARE reported.
“That should have made any prosecutor hesitant to bring charges because eyewitness identifications are often unreliable and one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions,” the district attorney, Mary Moriarty, said.
At a news conference, Haynes thanked his family, the Great North Innocence Project – which is dedicated to aiding the wrongfully convicted – and Moriarty, a former public defender.
“It takes the community to recognize things to change it, so I just appreciate everybody for the support and their love,” Haynes remarked.
Sherer’s family called Haynes’s release a “travesty”. Sherer’s sister-in-law, Dawn, said the lone eyewitness in the case – the victim’s sister, Cindy McDermid, who is now dead – was always sure about what she saw.
“He pointed a gun at Cindy, Randy jumped in and started fighting with him,” Dawn Sherer told KARE. “There’s an alley right behind the flower shop – she saw him run from there and get into a car. She actually saw him, that’s what she testified to.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is all bullshit. And you can conjure up all kinds of proof but there’s something else going on there.”
Randy Sherer and McDermid were working at Jerry’s Flower Shop in Minneapolis on 16 May 2004 when a man wielding a gun charged in and demanded cash. Sherer was shot dead as McDermid fled the store.
Authorities charged Haynes four days later, even though Moriarty said he was “younger, 50 pounds lighter, significantly shorter, had much longer hair and a different manner of speech than the man [McDermid] described to the police”.
Another witness later described seeing Haynes as he fled the scene. A relative of Haynes reported hearing him brag about pulling off a robbery on the morning of the killing.
Both witnesses helped set the stage for Haynes to be convicted at trial despite his assertions of innocence. He was also sentenced to life imprisonment.
But last year, the Great North Innocence Project obtained affidavits from both witnesses which cast doubt on Haynes’s conviction. One said he didn’t get a clear view of the person fleeing the flower shop but felt pressure by police to make “potentially inaccurate identifications”, according to copies of the affidavits, shared by the New York Times. The other said he initially told investigators he didn’t know about Sherer’s killing but implicated Haynes after being threatened with criminal charges.
Haynes’s legal team challenged the constitutionality of his conviction at a 28 November hearing. While a ruling from that hearing remained pending, Moriarty told media outlets that she decided freeing Haynes was the just thing to do after reviewing investigators’ work, a transcript of his trial and the new evidence.
On Monday, Haynes said his priority was to visit his mother at her nursing home. One of Haynes’s attorneys said he would seek reparations under Min
nesota’s wrongfully convicted law.
“Now you all can recognize that I’m actually innocent,” Haynes said.
The top local prosecutor at the time of Haynes’s conviction was Amy Klobuchar, now a Democratic US senator. A few years before his conviction, Klobuchar’s office successfully prosecuted a teenager named Myon Burrell in connection with the killing of 11-yearold Tyesha Edwards despite a lack of a murder weapon, fingerprints or DNA evidence, according to the Associated Press.
Burrell had been sentenced to life imprisonment despite being 16 at the time of the killing. But he left prison in December 2020 after the Minnesota board of pardons commuted his life sentence.