MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – After 20 years in prison, Marvin Haynes was released Monday, with the help of Hennepin County and the Great North Innocence Project (GNIP), after being wrongfully convicted of the 2004 fatal robbery of a flower shop that killed 55-year-old Randy Sherer.
GNIP attorney Anna McGinn says how it works is they receive a request, and it’s deemed adequate to work on, they begin an investigation, starting from scratch, meaning they need to “talk to witnesses from the crime, individuals that are documented in their court documents or trial witnesses, and expert witnesses that can testify on behalf of the client.”
McGinn says in Haynes’s case, they used Dr. Nancy Steblay, an expert psychologist, to testify that his case was a bad eyewitness identification.
GNIP is currently working on 46 Minnesota cases, formally representing 10 of them.
