Indigenous men imprisoned for 18 years for Alaska murder settle for $5M after vacated conviction

Three of the four Indigenous men who served 18 years in prisonfor a murder conviction in Alaska that was ultimately vacated willreceive a total of nearly $5 million in a settlement confirmed bythe city of Fairbanks on Monday.

The convictions of the so-called Fairbanks Four in the 1997 deathof Fairbanks teenager John Hartman were vacated in 2015 after a keystate witness recanted testimony and following a weeks-long hearingreexamining the case that raised the possibility others had killedHartman.

The men George Frese, Eugene Vent, Marvin Roberts and KevinPease argued that an agreement that led to their release in whichthey agreed not to sue was not legally binding because they werecoerced. The men also maintained there was a history ofdiscrimination against Alaska Natives by local police. Pease isNative American; Frese, Vent and Roberts are Athabascan AlaskaNatives.

The legal fight over whether the men could sue the city despitethe agreement has gone on for years. In 2021, the U.S. Supreme Courtdeclined to take up the case after a three-judge panel of the 9thU.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favour.

Pease, Frese and Vent will each receive $1.59 million from thecity's insurer, according to a statement provided by Fairbanks cityattorney Tom Chard. Roberts declined a settlement offer and his caseis still pending, the statement said.

An attorney for Roberts did not immediately reply to an emailsent Monday.

The city's statement said the decision to settle was made by itsinsurer, Alaska Municipal League Joint Insurance Association. Theassociation's executive director did not immediately return a callseeking comment.

The statement said the settlement "is not an admission ofliability or fault of any kind," and the city declined further comment about it.

A federal judge in late September signed off on a request by theparties to have the case involving Pease, Frese and Vent dismissed.The settlement agreement was reported last week by the FairbanksDaily News-Miner.

Thomas Wickwire, an attorney for Frese and Pease, declinedcomment on the matter, citing Roberts' pending case.

Terms of the settlement with each of the three men included a"non-publicity" clause in which the men and their attorneys agreedto not make public statements about the case until claims by all themen are resolved.

A state court judge in 2015 approved terms of a settlement thatthrew out the convictions of the four men, who had maintained theirinnocence in Hartman's death. Alaska Native leaders long advocatedfor the men's release, calling their convictions racially motivated.

The Alaska attorney general's office at the time said thesettlement was "not an exoneration" and called it a compromise that "reflects the Attorney General's recognition that if thedefendants were retried today it is not clear under thecurrentstate of the evidence that they would be convicted."