Wrongfully convicted Kentucky Black man, William “Ricky” Virgil, died before being exonerated after spending 28 years in prison.
Virgil died on Jan. 2–six years after he filed a lawsuit against the city of Newport and two former police officers for wrongful conviction in 2016. The suit, which has been reported to be still pending, would have enabled him to face the cops who falsified documents in his case.
Virgil was reportedly convicted of murder in 1988, based on circumstantial evidence, following the discovery of White 54-year-old psychiatric nurse Retha Welch’s dead body on Apr. 13, 1987. Her coworker found her in the bathroom of her Newport home after she had been raped, hit on the head, and stabbed 28 times.
The then 30-something-year-old Black man had originally met Welch while she was ministering to jail inmates. The two reportedly met two months before her death, after he was released from prison, and had a sexual relationship. Another inmate testified against him during his trial, but he later admitted being bribed.
Virgil maintained his innocence while he was incarcerated, and in 2010, lawyers for the Kentucky Innocence Project became interested in his case, winning a motion for DNA testing.
DNA evidence cleared him of wrongdoing in 2017, and then, he named the former officers in a civil case for allegedly tampering with evidence.
“All William ever wanted was a fair day in court. He never got that,” Virgil’s attorney, Elliot Slosar, said. “The fact that William Virgil couldn’t live to see justice is a reminder of how grave their misconduct is and how much they should pay for it.”
The then-69-year-old’s case was delayed after U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning agreed to do so on Jul. 27, so the officers involved could appeal. According to the American Bar Association, qualified immunity would shield them from liability and a jury trial.
Virgil’s latest trial initially began on Aug. 23, 2021.
Court filings indicated that Slosar described the appeal as “frivolous” and called it a delay tactic. He also predicted that his client might not have survived a year-long delay since he was an elderly man.
The wrongly-convicted man’s lawyer added that his conviction had “racial undertones.”
“[There are] such interesting racial undertones with how William Virgil got wrongfully convicted,” he said. “You have a white victim who suffered a tragic death, and the police buried the evidence against white alternate suspects to frame a Black man for a crime he did not commit.”
Slosar has reportedly promised to have an empty chair at trial in honor of his client. Virgil’s cousin, Jeri Colemon, will also represent him in court to ensure he would receive the justice he was never granted while alive.
