Dear John,

No mother should have to go through the pain and trauma of their child's wrongful conviction. That’s why the work the Innocence Project does is so close to my heart — and we have to make sure that work continues. Will you make a special Mother’s Day gift when all gifts will be matched dollar-for-dollar?* [[link removed]]

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My son Marvin is the oldest of my six children. He was a quiet, yet active boy, always out playing whatever sport he could get into — basketball, baseball, football. In the summer of 1982, he started training to be a paid firefighter, a job he’d wanted since he was a kid. I was always so worried about him, but there wasn’t much I could do to keep him from it — being a firefighter was his dream.

But that dream was cut short when he was wrongly accused, and later convicted by an all-white jury, of raping and robbing a young white woman. Marvin was only 18 years old when he was sentenced to 210 years in prison. Hearing those words in the courtroom felt like a dagger to the heart.

Will you make a special Mother’s Day gift to help the Innocence Project fight to protect other families from going through this nightmare? All donations from now until Mother’s Day will be matched dollar-for-dollar. [[link removed]]

Joan Anderson with her son Marvin Anderson (Image: Ross Photography/Innocence Project)

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Marvin was just a kid chasing his dreams. But it all changed in the blink of an eye when police showed up to Marvin’s house. The young white woman who had been brutally attacked said that her assailant was a young Black man who had approached her on a bicycle.

Marvin was immediately singled out by a local police officer because he was the only Black man in the community that the officer knew who had a white girlfriend. After a questionable photo ID and line up, the victim identified Marvin as the man who attacked her — and that was all it took for them to take my son away from us.

Thankfully, the Innocence Project took on his case, and after nearly two decades, DNA evidence was recovered from the crime scene that confirmed his innocence — but those years he spent inside, and my pain of leaving him there every week at the end of my visits for 15 years still haunt me.

I’m immensely appreciative of the work the Innocence Project team did on my son’s case, and I know there are so many other families out there who need their help.

Will you help make sure they can support as many families as possible through the horror that is wrongful conviction by making a matched donation in honor of Mother’s Day right now? [[link removed]]

Your support really means the world to moms like me,

Joan Anderson
Mother of Marvin Anderson, exonerated in 2002
Innocence Project

*P.S. All gifts will be matched $1-for-$1, up to $30,000 thanks to the Bernard and Geraldine Segal Foundation. Please donate today. [[link removed]]

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The Innocence Project works to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and create fair, compassionate, and equitable systems of justice for everyone. Founded in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, the organization is now an independent nonprofit. Our work is guided by science and grounded in anti-racism.

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