A Virginia man once sentenced to death in a 2021 murder-for-hire case will be released from prison after a plea deal finalized Monday ended his decades-long legal battle, his attorneys said.
Justin Michael Wolfe, whose case attracted national attention as an example of suburban youths dabbling in the worlds of drugs and death, pleaded guilty to two lesser charges of conspiracy to distribute marijuana and solicitation of robbery, according to court records. The latter disposition was made under an Alford plea, meaning a defendant doesn’t admit guilt but does admit prosecutors have enough evidence that could lead to a conviction.
The order Monday also finalized that all previous convictions in the case have been vacated and charges related to them are dismissed, according to Wolfe’s attorneys.
They expected Wolfe to be released from a Virginia prison Monday evening.
“After 25 years of rank injustice, Justin has achieved a measure of justice that long eluded him,” said Wolfe’s lead attorney, Scott Abeles. “In clearing his murder conviction and securing his release, we’ve stood on the shoulders of the lawyers who preceded us. Today belongs to Justin and his close-knit family.”
In an email, Wolfe’s mother noted that Monday’s order came from the same Prince William County Circuit Court where his sentence was first imposed.
“In 2002, this court sentenced my son, Justin Wolfe to die for murder-for-hire, a crime he did not commit. Today, after a 25 year battle for his life, my son finally gets to come home,” Teresa Steinberg wrote.
The plea “may not be what we had hoped,” she added, “but it does allow for Justin to maintain his innocence, finally be free and our family to begin to heal.”
Prince William County Commonwealth’s Attorney Amy Ashworth said Monday’s resolution “is a just and appropriate outcome under the circumstances.”
The evidence regarding Wolfe’s role in the murder has long been complicated, Ashworth said. “There is evidence that Wolfe may have advised or assisted Barber prior to the murder, depending upon which version of events is credited,” she said. “At the same time, the evidence does not allow us at this time, given the numerous versions of events since 2001, to definitively establish beyond a reasonable doubt every aspect of what occurred between Wolfe and Barber.”
The rulings Monday end an odyssey for Wolfe that began in 2001, when authorities claimed that he instructed his alleged partner in drug sales, Owen M. Barber IV, who was 21 at the time, to kill their supplier, a former Chantilly High School classmate named Daniel R. Petrole Jr., also 21 and the son of a Drug Enforcement Administration agent. At trial in 2002, Barber testified that Wolfe ordered the fatal shooting in a Bristow, Virginia, apartment parking lot and that Barber emptied a 9mm clip into Petrole’s car, fatally injuring him. Barber got 38 years; Wolfe was sentenced to death.
But the federal courts have repeatedly expressed outrage at the tactics of the Prince William police and prosecutors, who pressured Barber in 2001 to testify against Wolfe or face the death sentence. Barber later retracted his testimony that Wolfe had given the order to kill. But he said he continued to face the threat of the death sentence from Prince William, and he refused to testify on Wolfe’s behalf.
After a new trial was ordered by the federal courts, Wolfe in 2016 wrote a four-page confession in which he said he and Barber had discussed robbing Petrole, but “if Danny [Petrole] fought back or pulled a gun we agreed that Owen might have to kill Danny. Eventually we both agreed that it would be necessary to kill Danny because he was probably going to resist the robbery or figure out who did it and have to get revenge.”
That statement was part of Wolfe’s guilty pleato murder and distribution of narcotics, and he received a 41-year sentence. But his lawyers have argued in recent years that the plea was coerced and the confession was false, a result of Barber’s unwillingness to testify for Wolfe, essentially the only witness in the case for both sides. The U.S. Supreme Court got involved about eight years ago, ordering Virginia courts to review whether Wolfe’s plea was involuntary, but the state courts rejected the claim.
“What happened to Danny was tragic,” Steinberg wrote. “The Petrole family lost a son. There was never any doubt that Owen Barber killed Danny.”
The way her son’s case was prosecuted, which was sharply criticized last summer by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, “only compounded the pain and suffering of all involved.”
In 2022, attorneys for Wolfe asked the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to vacate Wolfe’s conviction and grant his unconditional release, according to court records. Extensive legal filings followed, an appeals court weighed in, and settlement negotiations led to Monday’s resolution, the filings state.
The post He got the death sentence 24 years ago. A judge just freed him after plea deal. appeared first on Washington Post.
