In the early morning hours of May 6, 1960, a young Black man named Marvin Leonard Williams, aged 20, died while in police custody in Conway, Arkansas. A former paratrooper and a married father with a second child on the way, Williams had been taken into custody by two white police officers on the evening of May 5th from a parked car on Markham Street, where he had been resting. The official report from law enforcement at the time claimed that Williams, allegedly arrested for public intoxication, had died from an accidental fall down a flight of stairs at the Faulkner County jail, resulting in a fatal head injury.
For a quarter of a century, the official narrative of an accidental death remained unchallenged. However, the Williams family never stopped believing that Marvin’s death was no accident. Their quest for the truth was reignited 25 years later when a man named Charles Hackney, who had been an inmate in the same jail on the night of Marvin's death, wrote a letter to the family. In his letter, Hackney confessed that he had witnessed and heard police officers beating Marvin Williams in his cell. He explained that he had remained silent for so long due to threats from a prosecutor who later became a judge.
Hackney's letter provided the crucial evidence needed to reopen the investigation into Marvin Williams' death. Based on his testimony and a re-examination of the original autopsy report, which revealed that Marvin had no alcohol in his system and that his injuries were inconsistent with a fall, two former police officers, Marvin Iberg and Bill Mullenax, were indicted on first-degree murder charges. The case garnered national attention, with major news outlets covering the 1985 trial.
Despite the new evidence and eyewitness testimony, the trial did not result in a conviction. An all-white jury acquitted both Iberg and Mullenax. During the trial, Hackney's testimony became problematic for the prosecution, as he reportedly also implicated the late sheriff, Joe Castleberry, and the jailer, Joe Martin, in the beating. The acquittal was a devastating blow to the Williams family's long fight for justice. While several law enforcement officers were suspected of being involved in the death of Marvin Williams, no one was ever held legally responsible for his death.
