One week after walking out of Deerfield Correctional Center, John Anthony Holmes stood examining a wall of photographs in a conference room at the University of Virginia School of Law — all photos of men who had been exonerated through the work of the Innocence Project Clinic.
Holmes recognized a few of their faces from the more than 17 years he had spent in two Virginia prisons before the Court of Appeals of Virginia vacated all eight of his convictions for aggravated sexual battery and child abuse, granting his writ of actual innocence Sept. 24.
“I wasn’t the only innocent man in prison,” Holmes said. “But people have to be able to give themselves a reason, to make it easier to accept the injustice. People who came to see me would say things like, ‘We’re all guilty of something.’ I would always respond, ‘If we’re all guilty of something, why don’t you have an orange jumpsuit on?’”
His case began amid a custody dispute with his former wife, Denise Holmes Bray. Holmes had previously spent time in prison on domestic violence charges between 1998 and 2004. After his release, his three daughters moved in with him, and he later received full custody after the Suffolk County Department of Social Services found that Bray had medically neglected and physically abused their oldest daughter.
Beginning in 2008, Bray reported allegations that Holmes was abusing the girls. At one point, according to the Court of Appeals, Bray’s mother called DSS pretending to be a concerned neighbor. Three investigations that year found the allegations unfounded and cited the custody dispute as a possible motive for malicious reporting.
After the girls began living part time with Bray again, new allegations emerged in 2009. DSS again found the claims unfounded, but prosecutors charged Holmes and the criminal case moved forward.
Holmes pleaded not guilty and waived his right to a jury trial. He was convicted after a bench trial on five counts of aggravated sexual battery and three counts of physical abuse or neglect.
Holmes said the nature of his convictions made prison especially dangerous for him. “Within a prison, that is the worst charge you could ever have,” he said. “To be accused of touching or molesting a child. That’s the worst.”
He did his best to navigate prison culture and protect himself by serving as an inmate pastor and chaplain’s aide. A few years later, the prosecution’s case began to unravel.
In 2015, Holmes’ oldest daughter, by then an adult, wrote to the court and recanted her trial testimony. She said her mother had pressured her and her sisters into making false allegations against their father. Holmes filed a petition for a writ of actual innocence based on her recantation, but it was dismissed.
The Innocence Project at UVA Law began working on the case in 2022, after Holmes had spent years trying to challenge his convictions on his own.
The clinic’s co-directors, Jennifer Givens and Juliet Hatchett ’15, were struck by his recognition that words alone would not convince them of his innocence. Givens recalled him saying that only he and God knew for certain whether he was innocent; the clinic’s job was to investigate.
“Everything we saw and heard led us to believe that … he is innocent,” she said.
Eventually, Rob McFarland of McGuireWoods, a College graduate, also joined the effort as co-counsel.
In 2024, a second daughter recanted. She said their mother had coached the girls before trial and physically abused them when they resisted making false statements. In an affidavit, the daughter wrote that she felt terrible knowing her testimony had put an innocent man in prison.
The Innocence Project clinic filed a new petition for writ of actual innocence, and this past April, Holmes, his wife, Kimberly, his two oldest daughters and other witnesses testified at an evidentiary hearing.On Sept. 24,the Court of Appeals of Virginia granted the writ, finding that no rational factfinder would have found Holmes guilty beyond a reasonable doubt had they known the truth.
During Holmes’ visit to the Law School, he said he had recognized a pattern among prisoners who believed they were wrongly convicted.
At first, they would tell everyone they were innocent. After enough years, they stopped even trying.
“Nobody cares,” Holmes said.
His faith and forgiveness helped him resist bitterness, he said.
“Holding onto unforgiveness is a waste of time,” Holmes said. “It just keeps you locked into yesterday. Yesterday’s gone.”
He is just beginning to learn how to function in a world that transformed while he was gone. Within days of his release, Holmes regained his driver’s license. Two days later, he got lost trying to use a navigation system. A former truck driver, he is studying to renew his commercial driver’s license and return to work. He wasn’t familiar with rideshare apps or the gig economy.
During the interview, Holmes paused while trying to remember the word for a device he used a few times in prison to communicate with family.
It resembled a laptop, and you just touch the screen to hang up, he said.
“Tablet,” someone supplied.
“Tablet, thank you,” Holmes said.
The personal losses are harder to measure.
Holmes and Kimberly married in 2005. The strain of a marriage conducted largely through prison visits eventually led them to divorce, though Kimberly continued helping with his case. They later married each other again.
The day he was released, she was given 90 minutes to come pick up her husband, the man she hadn’t lived with in 17 years.
They were already bickering about his diet, but mostly she said she was looking forward to finally being able to “make memories” with him.
Holmes’ daughters welcomed the opportunity to testify at the recent hearing, even though they knew it would be hard to face their father after all his years in prison. His oldest daughter left her newborn in the neonatal intensive care unit while she testified at the April hearing. A few days after Holmes came home, she and the baby went to church with him.
“When she came through the door with my grandson, I turned into a ball of tears,” Holmes said. “God can do anything.”
Former clinic student Kate Granruth ’24 worked on the case during the investigative phase. Current third-year students Sophie Call and Audrey Felton joined later, to help prepare his attorneys for an evidentiary hearing.
Call and Felton had met him only once — in a prison conference room. All three women were at the Law School on Oct. 2 to see his appearance as a free man on Wrongful Conviction Day.
This time, they hugged him.
The moment captured what years of clinic work had produced. No longer a client they had to visit behind prison walls, he was standing in the Innocence Project office, looking at photographs of other men who once doubted anyone would believe them.
Holmes remembered watching one of their releases on a TV broadcast while he was in prison.
“He was getting in the car,” Holmes said, “and I was thinking to myself, ‘I’m so happy for him. I wonder when my day will come.’”
Data from Unviersity of Virginia School of Law