VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — A Norfolk man convicted of murder following a trial that hinged on testimony from a coerced witness and a disgraced former Norfolk police detective was exonerated this month.
Gilbert Merritt III was cleared July 11 after serving more than 20 years of a 30-year prison sentence. He was convicted in 2001 of first-degree murder following a trial dependent on testimony from a witness who later recanted her statements and from Norfolk police detective Robert Glenn Ford, who was later convicted on federal charges.
The Innocence Project at the University of Virginia’s Law School, which works to exonerate wrongfully convicted Virginians, picked up Merritt’s case in 2018.
