JUNEAU, Alaska — An Alaska Native man who maintained his innocence in the 1997 killing of a white teenager has agreed to an $11.5 million settlement with the city of Fairbanks after alleging police acted with a racial bias in a case in which he and three other Indigenous men spent nearly two decades in prison.
Marvin Roberts is the last of the so-called Fairbanks Four to reach a settlement with the city after their murder convictions were vacated in 2015. While the agreement in his long-running civil lawsuit against the city and police officers was announced in late March, the parties on Wednesday formally asked a judge to dismiss Roberts’ case, citing the settlement.
“I don’t think any amount of money will be enough to justify what I endured as an innocent man in prison,” Roberts said in a recent statement. “This settlement, however, gives me freedom with my life, and most importantly, more time with my daughter and my parents, who supported me throughout this nightmare.”
Fairbanks city attorney Tom Chard confirmed the city and its insurance carriers had agreed to an $11.5 million settlement. Terms of the agreement set out a schedule for release of funds, with the final payment due by Oct. 1, 2026. The agreement stipulates that the settlement “shall not be construed as an admission of liability or responsibility” by the defendants.
Nick Brustin, a member of Roberts’ legal team with Neufeld Scheck Brustin Hoffmann & Freudenberger, LLP, a New York-based civil rights firm, in a statement called the agreement a “vindication of Marvin Roberts’ innocence, which he has maintained with extraordinary dignity for almost three decades.”
The agreement comes nearly 1 1/2 years after the other three men, George Frese, Eugene Vent and Kevin Pease, agreed to a settlement in which they each were to receive $1.59 million from the city’s insurer. The city in that case said the settlement was “not an admission of liability or fault of any kind.”
Alaska Native leaders long advocated for the men’s release, saying the convictions were racially motivated. Pease is Native American; Frese, Vent and Roberts are Athabascan Alaska Natives. Roberts was the only one of the four who was on parole at the time the convictions were thrown out.
A 2015 settlement in a civil case brought by the men that led to the convictions being thrown out followed a weeks-long hearing reexamining the case in detail and raised the possibility that others had killed 15-year-old John Hartman. While the four men each maintained their innocence, the Alaska Department of Law said the settlement was not an exoneration.
The men would argue the settlement that led to their release — in which they agreed not to sue — was not legally binding because they were coerced. An appeals court panel ruled in their favor.
Teal Soden, a spokesperson for the Fairbanks police department, said the agency lists Hartman’s killing as an “open/active” case.
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