Statement from Ramin Fatehi on the Habeas Corpus Ruling of Arsean Hicks

In 2000, Arsean Hicks was arrested for a murder that he was charged with committing when he was 16 years old. Norfolk Detective Robert Glenn Ford was involved in that investigation. The Norfolk Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office prosecuted Mr. Hicks and secured his conviction in 2001, and Mr. Hicks was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Yesterday, a Circuit Court judge granted Mr. Hicks a writ of habeas corpus, throwing out Mr. Hicks’ conviction and opening up the possibility of a new trial.

By law, the Attorney General’s Office has represented the Commonwealth in the habeas corpus case and will make the decision on whether to appeal the Circuit Court judge’s ruling. I will continue to cooperate fully with the Attorney General’s Office.

I am proud, however, that since taking office in 2022 I have made my office’s entire case file available to the lawyers representing Mr. Hicks and to the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law. Separately, Mr. Hicks’s case is one of over 200 files I have shared with the UVA Law Project on Informed Reform as part of the Robert Glenn Ford review that we jointly launched in 2023.

Should the Circuit ruling stand in Mr. Hicks’s case, I must assess the original case and determine whether it is possible to prosecute the case free of the stain of the original misconduct. I will do my duty in that review. It also means that I cannot comment on the facts of Mr. Hicks’s case now that this his case is again potentially pending trial.

I will say this, however, in general: Too many innocent people across America have wasted away in prison, and too many victims have had false closure based on a wrongful conviction, because of evidence suppression. And for too many years, some (not all) prosecutors across the country have stonewalled innocence lawyers and blocked their access to the facts of their cases as they try to determine whether their clients were in fact guilty.

I will never block an innocence lawyer’s inquiry into a Norfolk conviction. If a conviction is good, it will stand. If a conviction is wrongful, it will fall, and it should.

Hiding the ball harms the integrity of even the strongest convictions, and it undermines the community’s trust in the system. We have nothing to fear from the truth. It is the foundation of justice, and with truth I will always stand.

Ramin Fatehi

Commonwealth’s Attorney, City of Norfolk

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