Rojai Fentress has spent the last 22 holiday seasons behind steel doors, bars and razor wire, cordoned off from the rest of society for a slaying he continues to deny committing.

But there is still hope, and that hope is coming in the form of an early Christmas gift from the very man who helped get Fentress sentenced to more than half a century for the killing of a Colonial Heights man who was shot to death in 1996 during a crack deal in a crime-ridden Richmond neighborhood.

Fentress is incarcerated at the Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville, and after a Richmond judge ruled in September that he would not re-open the criminal case — one in which Fentress was convicted of murder as a 16-year-old boy and sentenced to 53 years in prison — dreams of freedom for the 38-year-old Fentress were put on the back burner.

But then the letter arrived.

Brian A. Wainger, now an attorney in the private sector in Virginia Beach, was the person tasked with proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Fentress was guilty. Taking far less than a full day, the jury trial was swift as two guilty verdicts for murder and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony were delivered despite the lack of any real physical evidence.

Notwithstanding the quick convictions, the case was hardly open and shut.

Wainger offered several plea deals to Fentress and his defense attorney, according to Fentress. Maintaining his innocence throughout, Fentress rejected every plea deal that came his way, the last offered minutes before the murder trial that would have seen him serve just five years in prison for the slaying after one of the witnesses was a no-show for the hearing.

The lead detective in the case never even bothered to question Fentress but did extensively interview those willing to implicate the teen. And during the trial, the state’s main witness was not entirely truthful on the stand.

The witness and the detective have since both killed themselves.

Two months after the 1997 trial, during the sentencing phase it was Wainger who implored the judge to show “no sympathy” when sentencing Fentress who, despite his age, was tried as an adult.

The judge obliged, hammering Fentress with more than five decades in prison. His formal release date is set for Nov. 30, 2043, according to the Virginia Department of Corrections. Fentress will be 63 years old.

Now, more than two decades after the murder conviction, it’s Wainger who's asking the state to show some sympathy for the man he helped lock away as a boy.

Wainger gets involved

Fentress' quest for freedom received a jolt of good news several weeks ago when Wainger unexpectedly contacted the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville, which for two years has been working on freeing Fentress.

The former prosecutor had made a congratulatory call concerning an unrelated case where an inmate was released from prison, but the topic of conversation quickly pivoted to Fentress.

Later, Wainger met with the directors of the Innocence Project and spoke to them about developments in the case.

Finally, on Nov. 9, he wrote a letter supporting a petition for the conditional pardon of Fentress to the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth, perhaps cracking the door and giving Fentress his first real shot at being released after spending more than half of his life in prison.

Wainger hasn't been in the field of criminal prosecution for nearly two decades, but it appears that Fentress' case continues to gnaw at him. In the letter, Wainger said he never could imagine that years later “I would be confronted with the possibility that a person I prosecuted may well be innocent of the charges for which he was convicted.”

Wainger notes he prosecuted Fentress in 1997 after having previously served as an assistant attorney general in the state's criminal litigation division.

“I felt an obligation to serve the interests of justice then, as I do now,” he said.

Wainger said he prosecuted Fentress “zealously” and was confident he was guilty of murder and the gun charge.

However, The News Leader has uncovered inconsistencies in witness testimony that helped put Fentress behind bars, and interviewed another inmate who has admitted to the slaying, exonerating Fentress.

“I am now aware of substantial evidence of extraordinary circumstances that require me to advocate on behalf of his Conditional Pardon and immediate release from prison,” Wainger says in the letter.

Wainger also acknowledges that the 53-year sentence was “unusually harsh” for a teenager, and suggests a 20-year sentence would have been appropriate.

“Assuming Mr. Fentress indeed committed the crimes for which he was convicted, he has now served a fair punishment, and at 38 years old, is likely not the same person as he was at 16. Under these circumstances alone, confining Mr. Fentress in prison for additional time will likely not further rehabilitate him, or serve the interests of justice.”

Wainger said even if the Innocence Project is correct in its assessment that Fentress is innocent, it would be “all but impossible” to prove it considering the passage of time and the number of people involved in the case who have since died.

“That fact alone, however, does not justify a disregard for the evidence that counsel at the Innocence Project have uncovered,” he wrote.

The Innocence Project said the state’s parole board is now in possession of the letter, but said a timetable to review the letter and decide on Fentress’ future is not yet in place.

Fentress reacts to Wainger's letter

Fentress dares to dream of a life beyond his confinement. With Wainger's letter, his ambitions are spoken about more frequently now, the focus slightly sharper.

It's as if Fentress is a sprinter at the starting line, his muscles twitching as he prepares to burst forward.

There isn't much money left in his prison account — some of which went toward an engagement ring for his fiancée — but that's not a deterrent for a man whose hopes for freedom began the day he was arrested as a 16-year-old while with his mother and trying to enroll in school.

During his incarceration, Fentress has earned his GED, obtained his custodial maintenance certification, is studying Spanish as a second language, takes a business management course and continues to work in the prison's shoe repair shop.

"I'm a cobbler," he noted.

Already, while still behind bars, Fentress is mulling decisions those on the outside must confront on a daily basis. If and when he is freed, his ideas spill out as he discusses his future plans. He wants to apprentice at a barber shop, where he hopes to eventually earn his license and perhaps open his own business. Taking classes at a community college is something he speaks about often, and he said he'd do janitor-type work if he has to in an effort to make ends meet upon his release.

But earning a living isn't the only thing on his mind.

Probably most dear to his heart, besides his future spouse, is a nonprofit he hopes to join with his brother and sister-in-law, the "L.E.A.D. Initiative," which stands for "learn, explore, advance and discover." Fentress said he wants to work with at-risk youth, and said one day he'd like to own a barber shop and offer on-the-job training to older teens and young adults.

As for Wainger's letter, which he called "a sense of relief," Fentress' hopes have been buoyed.

"I think the letter is amazing," he recently said in an email from prison. "I believe that letter is a gift. What better way to get it than from the horse's mouth?"

When contacted earlier this week, Wainger declined to comment any further.

Of course, getting married is high on Fentress' to-do list. Alicia Wyatt, 36, is a deputy sheriff who works at the Richmond City Justice Center. She's also engaged to Fentress.

The two met by phone through a mutual acquaintance a couple of years ago. Fentress said he was feeling emotionally down at the time and had called a family friend, who put Wyatt on the phone at his request. There was an immediate connection.

"She made me laugh," Fentress said. "She put a smile on my face."

Last February, while Wyatt was at an Applebee's restaurant with friends, Fentress called her cell phone from prison. As planned, one of Wyatt's friends produced an engagement ring and Fentress asked her to marry him. Wyatt accepted.

"She is my everything," Fentress recently said during a telephone interview.

While Fentress is full of energy, ideas and raring to get his life going after 22 years behind bars, Wyatt can be thought of as the more steadying influence. A deputy for six years, she sometimes cautions Fentress to slow down just a bit. If he is conditionally released by the parole board, Wyatt said she hopes Fentress will simply allow himself to first get acclimated to a society he's been absent from for more than two decades.

Although Fentress dreams big, Wyatt said her thoughts drift to simpler everyday pursuits like "Netflix and chilling with my baby. And maybe a puppy!"

Wyatt also helped organize a petition at www.change.org urging Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to free Fentress.

Wyatt doesn't know if Fentress will be released in 2019, but said she doesn't want to put a timeframe on his return because that can lead to heartbreak if it doesn't work out. Still, she feels that with the Innocence Project in his corner, Fentress in good hands.

"I've always had high hopes," she said. "This is what they do. They have a good success rate."

As for Wainger's correspondence to the parole board, Wyatt said, "The letter is like a cherry on top."

Fentress is adamant that whatever takes place is meant to be. He has noted in the past that his incarceration, in a way, got him off the streets and perhaps prolonged his life after so many people he once knew are now dead.

Fentress said his quest for freedom has also brought so many positive people into his life that he otherwise would have never met, including Wyatt and the many legal eagles at the Innocence Project working to secure his freedom.

"God is great," he said.

The crime, the players

The killing attributed to Fentress has been well documented by The News Leader. It was April 13, 1996, when 28-year-old Tommy Foley decided he wanted to buy some crack cocaine with a woman, 31-year-old Julie Howard, after running into her at a Richmond bar earlier that evening.

The two, who vaguely knew one another, headed to the Midlothian Village Apartments, a low-income housing complex on Richmond's south side.

Foley exited Howard’s 1986 Chevrolet Camaro and walked to a breezeway with the person he’d been negotiating with to finalize their crack deal. There was a group of about six to eight people milling around, according to Howard’s testimony.

Moments later, a gunshot rang out. Mortally wounded, Foley managed to get back to the car. Foley told Howard to drive him to the Chippenham Hospital in Richmond. He died from a fatal chest wound not long after being shot.

After being identified by two people said to be at the scene of the shooting, about five months later Fentress, just 16, was arrested and charged with Foley’s killing.

At the 1997 trial, previously described as a charade by Deirdre Enright, director of the U.Va. Innocence Project Clinic at the University of Virginia, Howard (whose last name was Francisco at the time), was petite, newly married and pregnant.

“In Rojai’s case, the criminal justice system failed miserably," Enright said. "The detective assigned was more interested in resolving the case then solving it, and prosecutors were more interested in securing the conviction than insuring its accuracy. Rojai continues to pay dearly for the mistakes of so many others he didn’t even know existed.”

Portrayed as a light partier and one hesitant to try hard drugs, Howard was anything but, based on Enright’s research. Instead, Enright said Howard was a hard drinker and substance abuser with mental health issues.

Howard, who previously told Detective James Hickman of the Richmond Police Department that she was “lit” on the night of the killing, informed the jury she had no more than three beers before the shooting.

"Rojai’s case has many of the red-flags issues that can signal a wrongful conviction: a quick and shoddy police investigation; a murder trial for an indigent 16-year-old African-American child that lasted little more than an hour; a compromised in-court eyewitness identification by a young woman who’d been drinking at the time of the crime; exculpatory information that was withheld from the defense, and lawyering that was sloppy and ineffective at best," Enright said.

In court, both Howard and Hickman also testified she didn't pick anyone out of two lineups shown to her earlier by the detective, none of which showed Fentress. But an audio tape of the questioning — which Fentress said his defense didn't hear until he filed a 2016 appeal — begs more questions and seems to contradict Howard’s testimony that she didn't pick anyone out of the lineup.

“This one looks the closest,” Howard told Hickman on the audio recording as they eyed the photo lineups. She later added, “This would be it ...” On the recording, it sounds as if Howard is tapping a photo with her finger, picking out someone who wasn't Fentress.

Howard killed herself in 2003, according to research done by the U.Va. Innocence Project. Hickman, 68, took his own life last year in North Chesterfield County. Both were shot in the head.

In 2014 another Richmond man, Deanthony M. Doane, signed an affidavit claiming he killed Foley. Doane is already serving a 38-year prison sentence for an unrelated 2005 drug slaying.

In a 2016 interview with The News Leader, Doane went into great detail about how Foley was killed. As a former Richmond dealer who sold drugs at the Midlothian Village Apartments, Doane said one of the men who implicated Fentress was “lookin' out for me.”

Still, Fentress remains incarcerated for 22 years and counting.

The parole board could not be reached for comment.

"It should concern everyone that most of the things that caused Rojai’s wrongful conviction can and do still happen in Virginia," said Jennifer Givens, legal director of the Innocence Project in Charlottesville. "Eyewitness identifications still come into evidence, often without pre-trial hearings or expert testimony. Prosecutors and police can still withhold exculpatory information because open file policy is not mandatory. Police misconduct is protected from public scrutiny.”