Three to be freed in ‘Norfolk 4’ case

RICHMOND, Va. – Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine on Thursday granted conditional pardons to three members of the “Norfolk 4,” clearing the way for the former sailors to be released from prison, where they were serving life sentences for the 1997 rape and murder of a woman in Norfolk.

The pardons of Danial Williams, Derek Tice and Joseph Dick culminated a four-year campaign to clear four former sailors of a crime to which they all had confessed. The men claimed they were coerced into admitting the crime and that detectives fed them details of the incident. Some of those details turned out to be wrong. A fourth sailor, Eric Wilson, already had served nine years in prison and has been released. He was not pardoned.

Kaine said that he was simply reducing the remaining three sailors’ sentences to time served and that he was not declaring their innocence. Kaine said he concluded that the men “have not conclusively established their innocence and therefore that an absolute pardon is not appropriate.”

The men had been convicted in the slaying of Michelle Moore-Bosko, 18, of Pittsburgh, who had recently moved to Norfolk.

In 1999, police received a letter that a man named Omar Ballard had written to a friend confessing that he had killed Moore-Bosko. Detectives interviewed him, and his DNA matched the DNA at the crime scene. He eventually pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and said he acted alone. Already jailed for a similar, nonfatal attack on a 14-year-old girl, Ballard is serving life in prison.