In 1994, Marcus Ganzie was 17. He had no criminal record, but a friend of the family says he was hanging out with some older guys.
“His mother was working a night shift job," says Vanessa Price. "He was running with the wrong crowd, caving to peer pressure.”
One night, Ganzie accompanied a friend who planned to rob a drug dealer. Instead, the guy ended up killing the dealer and his girlfriend. Ganzie was there, but he was not the trigger man.
“He did not have a prior violent record," Price says. "He never held a weapon, never discharged a weapon.”
Still, he was considered an accessory to capital murder, making him eligible for a life sentence. Hoping for something less, he agreed to plead guilty, but in the early 90’s violent crime was peaking, politicians were vowing to get tough and the judge in Ganzie’s case showed no mercy. He received a sentence of life plus 73 years.
Ganzie has now served nearly 30 years, earning his GED behind bars and taking every course the Virginia Department of Corrections has to offer: anger management, substance abuse, art therapy, trade skills, custodial maintenance, business software applications and more.
When he ran out of options, he’d take those courses again. He’s health conscious and has developed a fitness routine, so when he’s finally released Ganzie hopes to work as a personal trainer, but he also plans to volunteer in the Black community – helping kids to steer clear of crime.
“I have to use this experience that I have gained in the prison," he vows. "I owe that to the community. I owe that to the victims' families.”
For now, however, he’s on a mission – determined to get a fair shake from the state that says he is eligible for parole. He will need at least four members of the parole board to approve his release. But for the last six months there have been just three members on a board that’s supposed to have five.
“I need a full panel review. I need five members, because if one decides to say no, I do have a 5th vote,” Ganzie explains.
Which is why he has submitted a writ of mandamus to Virginia’s Supreme Court. If granted, it would compel Governor Glenn Youngkin to appoint a fifth board member.
Recently, Youngkin announced that the chairman of the parole board would be leaving to head the Virginia Department of Corrections, but late last week he announced the appointment of two new members, bringing the total to four.
At the American Civil Liberties Union, Sean Weneta says he’s concerned about the woman chosen to head the board. Patricia West is a former judge who served as deputy attorney general under conservative Republican Ken Cucinelli and secretary of public safety under former Governor George Allen.
“We certainly do have concerns about the new chair, quite frankly because of her background as one of the architects of the abolition of parole under Governor Allen.”
So he, too, hopes the governor will appoint a fifth member to the board – someone with an open mind who will recognize that people like Marcus Ganzie pose little threat to public safety.
“The people who are candidates for parole are predominantly people who committed their crime 30 years ago," Weneta argues. "They are now nearly 50 years old or older, which really puts them at very low risk for offending, regardless of what their crime was in the past.”
The new board faces a low bar if compared to what the previous board did last year. 3,320 people applied for parole and just 78 got it.
