A running back who played for several NFL teams is publicly requesting that President Trump consider a clemency request for his nephew, stepping forward to seek Trump’s help after the president battled the NFL in particular over protests during the national anthem.
Trump said Friday that he hadn’t heard from any athletes, a week after he invited them to submit names of prisoners treated unjustly by the legal system. Apparently unknown to Trump, former NFL player Tony Paige sent a letter last week requesting clemency for his nephew Marcus Paige, who is serving a 25-year sentence for second-degree murder.
Paige, a former player for the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, and Detroit Lions, works as an NFL agent based in Maryland, and said he felt obligated to write the letter.
“The president put it out there. We figured we would ask,” Paige told the Washington Examiner. “He’s a great kid. He’s been in for a long time. He’s ready to re-enter society.”
Marcus Paige, now 38 years old, was arrested on Sept. 11, 2001, and after two trials was convicted based on the word of a single witness who changed her story repeatedly.
Court records indicate that Neilly Griffin, a fellow resident of the Trinidad neighborhood in Washington, D.C., accused Paige, then nicknamed “Fats,” and James “Dee” Hill about a year after Otis Graham was shot in 2000.
Hill pleaded guilty to the killing and two others, and in a 2008 letter he asked a judge to release Paige, who he claimed was wrongfully implicated.
Central to Paige’s conviction was a police theory that there were two gunmen, even though police only recovered five shell casings matching a gun found at Hill’s home. Police theorized that Paige used a revolver that did not expel casings.
Griffin originally told police in 2001 that she saw two men with hoods shoot at Graham’s car around 6 a.m. She said she saw Hill’s face when he fired into the driver’s side window, and saw Paige’s face in an alley afterward, according to summation of her various accounts in an appeals court ruling.
But Griffin told defense investigator James Hickey in 2002 she didn’t see the shooting, and signed a statement saying so. She testified at Paige’s first trial that she could not identify the shooters, and the jury deadlocked.
At a second trial, Griffin returned to her original accusation and Paige was convicted, even after the defense pointed out that the driver’s side window was undamaged (the rear window, instead, was missing) in a bid to undermine her original version of events.
The only other purported witness, Nicole Benbow, told police on the day of the murder that she hadn’t seen anything, but later testified she saw only Hill commit the shooting, despite hearing what sounded like two guns. She alleged police asked her to lie and accuse Paige.
Juana Paige, the mother of Marcus and sister of Tony Paige, told the Washington Examiner that her son fell victim to a neighborhood ethos against “snitching” to police. She said she spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal bills, but that neighbors did not want to come forward with accurate testimony implicating only Hill.
Despite questions about Griffin’s credibility, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals upheld Paige’s conviction in 2011, citing precedent and that “[w]e have repeatedly held that the testimony of one witness is sufficient to sustain a conviction.”
“Griffin’s testimony, if credited by the jury, was sufficient to convict appellant,” the court ruled.
Hickey, the investigator who interviewed Griffin in 2002, conducted a jailhouse interview with one of Griffin’s sons, William McCorkle, in 2006. McCorkle signed an affidavit saying that he was at home the day Graham was shot, and that his mother said she didn’t see the shooting.
McCorkle told Hickey that his mother had previously remarked that he looked similar to Hill, and that police later warned her of severe repercussions if her story changed. At least two of Griffin’s children have police officer fathers, her son said.
Griffin did not answer when her publicly listed phone number was called.
In his letter to Trump, Tony Paige did not delve into the facts of the case. Instead, he described a life-long bond with his nephew and his ability to help him rejoin society.
“Marcus has a full team ready to keep him on his feet, directed down the stable path he so wishes to be on. I plan to ensure he has employment so he’s able not only to provide for himself, but so that he has a way to contribute to his community,” Tony Paige wrote to Trump. “He will not lack for a place to live, a job to work, or guidance from those who care about him.”
“As an NFL agent, a huge piece of my job has been to cultivate the careers of the young men I represent and mentor them as they grow and learn in these careers,” he wrote. “This skillset of mine will undoubtedly transfer passionately to my relationship with Marcus should he be released.”
Paige declined to comment on players’ protests during the national anthem and said “I’m doing this for my nephew, it has nothing to do with me and Trump,” though he said he probably would be willing to visit the White House in relation to the case.
The Washington Examiner contacted many current NFL players leading national anthem protests against alleged racially motivated legal-system injustice, either directly of through their agents, asking if they would submit names to Trump, but did not receive responses.
On Friday, Trump said the silence from professional athletes may undermine their claims of injustice. “Maybe they’ve called the staff, but I have not personally heard from one,” Trump said. “Because I don’t know if it’s a real issue. I don’t think it’s a real issue.”
White House spokespeople did not respond to inquiries on whether staff had received professional athlete recommendations unknown to Trump. They did not confirm receipt of Tony Paige’s letter.
Marcus Paige’s case is backed by the CAN-DO Foundation, a group that also highlighted Alice Johnson’s case long before Kim Kardashian visited the Oval Office and convinced Trump to issue Johnson his second prison commutation, freeing her from a life sentence for drug crimes.
Speaking shortly after he released Johnson, Trump said his clemency powers were “a beautiful thing” and that he was reviewing 3,000 names for possible clemency, though it’s unclear whether there is a list containing so many names. Additional names were hand-delivered later that day by a policy advocate to White House counsel Don McGahn, who had requested more cases, and presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Amy Povah, who leads the CAN-DO Foundation, says she confirmed with the policy advocate who is serving as a conduit that Paige’s letter was sent to the White House on Wednesday. The advocate did not respond to requests for independent confirmation.
“CAN-DO normally doesn’t take second degree murder cases because we focus on drug conspiracy cases,” Povah said.
But, Povah added, “we have made a few exceptions, either where the conspiracy law caused someone to receive an excessive sentence due to violence attributed to a co-conspirator, or as in Marcus’s case where there is strong reason to believe the person is innocent.”
Marcus Paige is scheduled to be released from prison in January 2024, with credit for time served and good behavior. His mother said that even though his term is expiring soon, it’s not too late to correct what she views as an injustice, even if her son already served nearly two decades.
