Story of the Waverly Two: Help Them Finally Be Freed
Let’s set the scene.
Waverly, Virginia. It’s early in the morning, the mid-day sun just beginning to rise over the top of the Waverly Village apartment complex. Waverly, an average southern town, not the most affluent community, but one with people working hard to do what they can. For some, that includes raising their children to aspire to more. For others, that means working hard, long hours. And for a few, that means dabbling in the sale of drugs, like in any community.
On this morning, it appears one such interaction of this variety is taking place in the woods right outside the apartment complex. In the shadows, you can see two, or is it three, men standing together in the darkness, hushed whispers amongst them. At the same time, a police car pulls up, having seemingly also seen the same gathering you have. One man gets out of the car and approaches the group. Suddenly, one of the dealers rushes out and tackles the cop, and a shot goes off.
This was the scene that unfolded there on April 25, 1998. Or at least, this is what is believed to be the scene to have occurred that ended with Officer Allen Gibson, the man who approached what he saw as a drug deal, dying from gunshot wounds in the woods. According to NBC 12, police who arrived on the scene to see the wounded Gibson received a rudimentary story of events from him following the same order of events outlined above. He described the men as tall, Black men, and that one of his assailants had dreadlocks.
For a month, the Waverly police fervently searched for the culprits, interviewing witnesses, and arresting countless Black men in the community. Then, after some investigation, police arrested Ferrone Claiborne and Terrence Richardson after speaking to numerous witnesses who identified them at the scene of the crime. According to their Change.org petition, at the time of the attack and arrest, Richardson was 27, short with close-cropped cornrows, while Claiborne, 22, was tall and bald, clearly, neither of them matching the dreadlock description that Gibson gave.
Despite this, however, the case continued to be pushed to court to charge them with his murder, and because they feared possibly receiving the death penalty and experienced a lot of pressure from their inadequate attorneys, they both took a plea deal in state court to be charged with lesser charges on December 8, 1999. With this deal, Terrence pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter while Ferrone pled guilty to accessory, but despite these pleas of guilt, the two continuously asserted their innocence for the crime itself. From there, the case went on to the federal court, where a jury even found the two not guilty due to a lack of physical evidence and conflicting stories.
While serving their shorter sentences for the plea deal, they were taken back to court on fabricated drug charges from the FBI, asserting that the two were drug dealers, responsible for selling hundreds of kilos of cocaine. According to the Atlantic, however, at the time of the crime, the two men were exceedingly low income, and the witnesses who testified to seeing them selling drugs either had their own legal issues they were hoping to lessen with their testimonies or were extremely shaky experiences.
More detrimental, though, was that during the sentencing for these drug charges, the judge tacked on murder convictions for killing Gibson and sentenced them to jail for life. His ability to do this came from the Supreme Court decision United States v. Watts, which permits the judge or court to find someone guilty based on reasonable doubt without the need for another trial to prove it. And because they had pleaded guilty for the plea deal, in the eyes of the judge, that is enough to prove their true guilt.
Terrence and Ferrone have continued to maintain their innocence, however, even after being in prison for more than 20 years. According to Wavy 10, still to this day, there has been no DNA, blood, or physical evidence linking the two men to this crime, it only being based on their plea deal admissions and biased eyewitness accounts.
In 2019, the Innocence Project joined in the fight to help them gain their freedom, and while working with their attorney Jarret Addams, they found a new piece of evidence pointing the blame off them. Shannequia Gay, a 9-year-old girl at the time of the shooting, had given a 3-page statement to police outlining her eyewitness accounts of what happened that day of the shooting, an account that matches Gibson’s own story near perfectly, including a man that wore dreads. Then, when she was shown images of possible suspects and asked to pick who she saw at the crime out of a lineup, she did not pick Terrence or Ferrone but twice chose another man: Leonard Newby, a man with dreads who had a criminal past of gun violence at the time and an alibi that was shaky at best.
Adams believes that her testimony was specifically suppressed by the Sussex County Sheriff’s Department, as even Richardson’s old lawyer testified to having never been given or seen this statement before. With this new eyewitness account, more questions are being raised about how this trial and investigation were run.
In October 2021, the Waverly Two received support from an unlikely source: the daughter of Allen Gibson, Crissana Gibson, who was 8 years old at the time of her father’s death. During this time, Gibson wrote a statement saying the case needs to be looked at again and that she wants the real man or men responsible for her father’s death to be found and held accountable. She hopes that, if it is found in a new investigation and trial that Terrence and Ferrone are innocent, they will be set free and be given time to begin to heal from this experience.
A lot more has happened in the timeline of the Waverly Two’s fight for their freedom. From finding hope at a possible soon-to-be success in November 2021 with a 78-page brief in support written by Attorney General of Virginia Mark Herring trying to aid their release to Herring losing his reelection campaign to a candidate who has openly stated disapproval of the Shannequia Gay evidence and support of the “guilty plea means guilt” philosophy. This past May, the case has come to a standstill, as the Virginia Court of Appeals continues to deliberate giving the men a new case and discussion of evidence. Through all of this, however, Terrence and Ferrone, along with their families and attorney teams, have continued fighting for the truth to be known, for justice to be served.
Over two years ago, a Change.org campaign began collecting signatures and telling their story. Their goal is to achieve one million signatures of people who know these two to be innocent, for this outcry to force the state to either withdraw their guilty pleas, grant them clemency, or exonerate them. If you would like to help these two men, whose lives have been ripped away from them for a crime they didn’t even have a hand in, take 5 minutes to sign their petition and send it to those you know.
In the words of their attorney, Jarret Adams: “Why is it that people who look like us always get the short end of the stick? We always need a million people to confirm what we already know about our innocence. That’s the struggle; that’s the difficulty that we’re having, and that’s why we continue to talk about this case.”
