Northam grants full pardon to man convicted in 2002 Portsmouth killing

Gov. Ralph Northam this week pardoned a man convicted in a 20-year-old Portsmouth murder case, as his office says he’s trying to rectify injustices in the criminal justice system.

The governor granted the “absolute pardon” to Lamar Edward Barnes, now 40, who received a life sentence in the 2002 slaying of a pregnant woman and the shooting of another man.

Such full pardons are granted “when the governor is convinced that the petitioner is innocent of the charge,” Northam’s office said.

“This absolute pardon reflects Barnes’ innocence of the convictions handed down to him in 2003, for which he has been incarcerated for nearly the last two decades,” Northam’s office said in a statement Wednesday, adding that there were also “due process violations” against Barnes.

Barnes was charged in the April 2002 slaying of Amy McRae, and the shooting of her fiancé inside a house on Turnpike Road in Portsmouth. While McRae died, her unborn baby daughter and her fiancé both survived.

Barnes, who was then 20, maintained from the outset that he didn’t commit the crime.

But following an August 2003 jury trial in Portsmouth Circuit Court on first-degree murder, malicious wounding and gun counts, he was convicted of all charges and sentenced to life plus another 28 years behind bars.

Fast-forward nearly two decades, with the case in recent years taken up by the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia’s law school.

The Innocence Project said this week that the Virginia Attorney General’s “conviction integrity unit” also looked into the case over the past year and agreed that Barnes was innocent.

Northam’s office said that a “thorough investigation” found that Barnes had a “corroborated alibi” at the time that was “disregarded at trial.”

Petitions from the Innocence Project say Barnes told investigators in 2002 that he was at the London Oaks apartment complex in Portsmouth with two other men, though that evidence wasn’t introduced by Barnes’ lawyer at his jury trial.

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The governor’s office said Wednesday that eyewitnesses who testified for the prosecution against Barnes at the trial have since “recanted their identifications” of him. That included the slain woman’s fiancé, Mark King, who was shot in the head.

The Innocence Project said that someone gave Barnes’ name to King as the man who shot him. But though he initially went with that to investigators, he lacked an independent memory of the shooting.

“As his memory came back, he became more and more unsure, and then ultimately became convinced that it was not in fact Mr. Barnes who was the shooter,” said Jennifer L. Givens, a U.Va. law professor and director of the school’s Innocence Project.

“He made repeated attempts before trial — and after trial — to right that wrong, and to make sure that Mr. Barnes got out of prison,” she said. “Because he felt horrible that an innocent man was behind bars.”

But Givens said prosecutors with the Portsmouth Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office at the time “ignored” his pleas and “proceeded in the case against Mr. Barnes.”

King, who was indigent and didn’t have much family in recent years, died in 2020 of unknown causes. Before he passed, he spoke to the Innocence Project multiple times, including in a video statement.

Though he had been shot in the head and lost his fiancé, “he made it his life’s work to try to exonerate Mr. Barnes,” Juliet B. Hatchett, an assistant professor and the U.Va.’s Innocence Project’s associate director, said Friday.

“One of the many tragic things about this case is that he didn’t live to see this exoneration happen,” Hatchett added. “It’s pretty unusual that we get a victim who comes forward and works so hard to try to right a wrong of false testimony.”

The man the Innocence Project contends committed the crime has not been charged.

Immediately upon getting the absolute pardon from Northam Tuesday, Barnes was released from the Sussex State Prison in Waverly the same day.

Givens said with the quick turnaround time, Barnes didn’t go through the normal months-long Virginia Department of Corrections release programs, which are designed to help inmates learn to re-integrate back into society.

“Once the governor has decided that they agree that the man is innocent, they’re reluctant to keep them in prison anymore,” Givens said.

On the other hand, she said, it’s a shock to inmates to be “thrown out on the street” after decades behind bars, with few resources to help them out. Barnes is not yet ready to speak with the media about his incarceration and release, she said.

“He’s a little shocked at this point,” Givens said. “The adjustment for these clients is really intense. So we try to just be a little protective.”

Staff writer Dave Ress contributed to this story.

Peter Dujardin, 757-247-4749,

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