| On April 29, 1987, the body of 47-year-old Marlin Carpenter was found near his burned-out car in some woods north of Valdosta, Georgia. He had been stabbed multiple times.
Carpenter had been a teacher at the Georgia Christian School in Valdosta for the prior 18 years. He also was a minister at the Church of Christ in Jasper, Georgia.
Months later, 23-year-old Anthony Goodin was charged with Carpenter’s murder. Police said he had confessed that he killed Carpenter after Carpenter paid him to have oral sex.
In June 1988, Goodin went to trial in Lowndes County Superior Court. A witness testified that he saw Goodin with Carpenter on the school’s running track on the day before Carpenter’s body was found. Although Goodin recanted his confession as false, he admitted he engaged in sex with men for money and had done so with Carpenter. Goodin told the jury he was in Florida at the time of the crime.
Goodin was convicted on June 11, 1988. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In December 1988, Judge Roy Lilly granted Goodin a new trial based on a sworn affidavit from James Wimberly of Valdosta. In the affidavit, Wimberly said that another man, whose identity was not disclosed, had admitted that he killed a person in a park for making homosexual advances on him. Judge Lilly said the evidence was “so material that, if believed by a jury, it would probably produce a different verdict.”
Goodin went to trial a second time, and on December 7, 1989, a jury acquitted him.
– Maurice Possley
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