Va. prosecutor: Innocent man faces life behind bars unless McAuliffe pardons

Public Safety



Left: Norman Bruce Derr in 1986. Right: Michael Kenneth McAlister in 1986. (Courtesy of Virginia's Nottoway Correctional Center/Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, Miller & Chevalier)

By Spencer S. Hsu and Rachel Weiner April 7 at 11:04 PM
@rachelweinerwp

A convicted sex offender who claims he is innocent — and a prosecutor who believes him — on Wednesday will ask Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) to issue a full pardon, according to attorneys involved in the case.

Michael Kenneth McAlister, 58, of Richmond has already served 29 years in prison, and he faces the possibility of being locked away for years more under a Virginia law that allows the civil commitment of sexual predators.

Now, Richmond Commonwealth’s Attorney Michael Herring (D) and the original prosecutor and the lead police detective in McAlister’s 1986 kidnapping and attempted rape case all say they are certain that another man, an imprisoned serial rapist, committed the crime.
....

Herring and McAlister’s attorneys say in the request that they think the attack was committed by a felon named Norman Bruce Derr, who strongly resembles McAlister and who was convicted of several similar attacks. Detectives looking into a string of attacks in the mid-1980s recently told how they had followed Derr to the apartment complex where the assault in McAlister’s case occurred. At the complex, the detectives said, they saw Derr pull a stocking mask over his face, and they thought he was planning to assault an undercover female police officer who was there as a decoy.