
Glenn Youngkin and Jason Miyares are doing everything short of shouting the n-word at the top of their lungs in their official responses to President Biden’s move to grant clemency to two innocent Black men serving life sentences connected to the murder of a White police officer that even a jury said they didn’t commit.
“I am beyond outraged and in utter disbelief that President Biden would announce clemency for Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson – two men who admitted for being responsible to brutally killing Officer Allen Gibson, a hero and dedicated servant to our community,” Youngkin said in a statement issued by his office on Saturday.
“If the Democrats intend to build their vision of social justice on a pile of dead law enforcement officers, they could send no stronger message than the one they sent today,” Miyares said in a statement put out by his office on Saturday.
You’re left, from those statements, thinking that Biden is putting two admitted cold-blooded murderers back out on the streets.
Reality is, Claiborne and Richardson – given the media moniker “The Waverly Two” – have been the subject of a two decades-long effort to undo an obvious wrong.
The state case
Gibson, 25, was shot and killed with his service weapon during a 1998 drug bust in Waverly, in Sussex County, and according to court records, he was able to describe his attackers to responding officers as a “tall and skinny” Black man with “dreadlocks” who was assisted by another Black man who was balding and short.
Richardson, then 27, and Claiborne, then 22, were arrested, as police identified Richardson as the “tall and skinny” shooter Gibson had described, through he is only 5’8”, several inches shorter than Gibson, and Richardson wore his hair in cornrows, not dreadlocks, and Claiborne, while fitting Gibson’s description as bald, is four inches taller than Richardson.
There was also no DNA evidence linking them to the scene, and it would later emerge that police coerced a witness into saying that she saw Richardson shoot Gibson, which she would testify in court she did not actually see happen.
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State prosecutors eventually decided to offer Richardson and Claiborne a plea deal allowing Richardson to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter and Claiborne to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of being an accessory after the fact, and the two decided to take the deal for reasons that are common in our system of justice, which is governed by money, and access to it.
“My family ran out of money,” Claiborne said in a 2021 interview. “They were talking about giving us the death penalty. When our attorney came to us and said that this was the best deal, what else was I supposed to do in order to stay alive?”
Richardson said in that 2021 interview his lawyer told him that “even though they know that it may not have been y’all that did it, they’re going to make somebody wear this case. And it’s going to be y’all. You’re going to get the death penalty.”
“I said, Man that’s crazy. You’re trying to tell me I got to go to prison for something I didn’t do?” Richardson said.
In case you didn’t know already, this is how justice works in America for people who don’t have money, especially when you’re Black and don’t have money.
The federal case
Here’s where things get weird: Gibson’s family raised issue with what they viewed as lenient sentences for Richardson and Claiborne – Richardson got a 10-year sentence, with five suspended based on good behavior, and Claiborne was sentenced to time served.
The outcry led federal prosecutors to take up the case with new charges filed in 2000 under the RICO statute accusing them of selling crack cocaine and murdering the police officer in a drug deal gone wrong, despite there being no physical evidence linking the two to a drug sale.
The spurious claim that there was a drug sale involved was necessary for federal prosecutors to bring their fresh charges.
“These drug charges came out of nowhere. It was a loophole,” said former Innocence Project lawyer Jarrett Adams, who took on the case on behalf of Richardson and Claiborne in 2018. “They couldn’t just say, We’re trying to get to the murder of this officer. There would have been some sovereignty issues with that. But this way they could do it and say, I’m charging you with a RICO case where your drug dealing resulted in the death of an officer.”
The federal jury, in 2001, found the pair not guilty of murder, but guilty on the drug charges, and the judge, Robert Payne, sentenced Richardson and Claiborne to life in prison using a then-novel legal principle called “acquitted conduct sentencing,” a mechanism approved in a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that allows judges to sentence defendants based on charges for which they were acquitted.
The U.S. Sentencing Commission passed changes to federal sentencing guidelines last year to prohibit acquitted conduct from being used in sentencing guidelines.
In essence, Payne went with life in prison instead of the customary 10 years max because he said the pair’s prior guilty pleas were evidence that “both defendants participated in the killing of Officer Gibson,” even though the jury in his courtroom had found them innocent; to that point, a juror in the case told a Richmond TV station in a 2017 interview that, during the jury’s deliberations, “no one ever really thought they were guilty of murder.”
Racial politics in 2025
It’s clear what Youngkin and Miyares are doing. 2025 is an election year in Virginia.
Youngkin can’t run for re-election, but Miyares can, and is.
“The pain and sorrow this clemency causes the Gibson family is unimaginable,” Youngkin said in his statement issued on Saturday. “To know that the men who took Officer Gibson’s life will walk free is not just a grave injustice – it is a heartbreaking blow to those who continue to mourn his sacrifice. This is despicable; a grim day for justice and for the families who trust that our system will hold the guilty accountable.”
Here’s more from Miyares:
“Yesterday, Joe Biden woke up and decided that these two violent criminals deserve clemency. Joe Biden should be ashamed, but we know that he probably doesn’t even know what he signed,” said Miyares, clearly a pathetic human being, for saying what he said there.
The press release from the AG’s office included a statement from Gibson’s daughter, Crissana, who, come on, you have to feel for, because she was 8 when her father was killed, but keeping two guys who weren’t responsible for what happened in prison for the rest of their lives makes that better, how, exactly?
“This is a huge miscarriage of justice, and I am completely disgusted by the outgoing administration,” Gibson said in her statement. “The Virginia Attorney General’s office has worked tirelessly to keep these murderers behind bars, and I am forever grateful for their dedication and hard work. I am so disappointed that the disgraceful Biden administration has failed my family, my father, and the entire law enforcement community.
“Neither my family nor I have ever supported the release of Richardson or Claiborne, and we denounce this decision by the outgoing failed presidency of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s abuse of the justice system.”
So, the daughter is a MAGA.
Still feel for her, even though she still wants two innocent Black guys to spend the rest of their lives in prison for something they didn’t do.