Marcus Holloway walked out of the Fulton County Jail at 4:47 p.m. Friday — 22 years, 3 months, and 11 days after he was arrested for a murder he has always said he did not commit.
DNA testing on a cigarette butt found at the original crime scene — never tested at trial — excluded Holloway as a contributor. A second test on a hairshaft found on the victim reached the same conclusion. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit moved to vacate the conviction within hours of receiving the lab reports.
A judge signed the order at 4:15 p.m. Holloway, 51, was out of custody 32 minutes later.
“I’m gonna go see my mama. That’s all. I just want to see my mama.”
— Marcus Holloway, to WACN 21 as he left the jail
What the DNA showed
The cigarette butt, found in an ashtray outside the duplex where the victim was killed in October 2004, was logged into evidence but never sent to a lab. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation tested it for the first time in April 2026, at the request of Holloway’s post-conviction attorneys.
The cigarette contained a Y-STR profile that did not match Holloway. The profile did match a person in the state’s DNA database — a convicted felon named Terrence Miles, who is now a person of interest in the case.
A second test, on a hair found clutched in the victim’s hand, also excluded Holloway and could not be linked to Miles — meaning at least two other people were at the scene.
“The physical evidence has been telling a different story for 22 years. We just needed someone to test it.”
— Sarah Chen, Holloway’s post-conviction attorney, with the Georgia Innocence Project
What went wrong in 2004
The original case against Holloway was built almost entirely on two eyewitness identifications — both of which came from neighbors who were shown Holloway’s photo in a single-photo lineup procedure that is now considered unreliable.
Holloway, then 29, was six blocks away at the time of the murder, according to a coworker who testified at trial. He had no prior criminal record. The coworker recanted her alibi testimony in 2018 — saying she had been pressured by detectives — but the recantation was never presented to a court.
The original prosecutor, Fulton County ADA James Whitley (now deceased), also failed to disclose a note from a detective that mentioned a “different suspect” — a Brady violation that Holloway’s new attorneys say is now the foundation of the civil rights lawsuit they plan to file.
What happens next
Holloway’s attorneys at the Georgia Innocence Project plan to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Atlanta and the lead detective within 60 days, seeking damages for wrongful conviction, malicious prosecution, and Brady violations.
The lawsuit will likely seek $14 million to $18 million in compensatory and punitive damages, plus a mandatory policy review of the Atlanta Police Department’s photo-lineup procedures.
“Twenty-two years is twenty-two years. There’s no amount of money that fixes that. But Marcus is owed a life he can live, and the city is owed a reckoning.”
— Chen
The Fulton County DA’s Office said Friday it is conducting a “full internal review” of the case. The Atlanta Police Department declined to comment beyond a statement saying it “is aware of the exoneration and is reviewing the case file.”
The cost of wrongful conviction
Georgia has paid out more than $34 million in wrongful conviction settlements since 2010, according to a 2025 report from the National Registry of Exonerations. The median time between conviction and exoneration in Georgia is 15 years.
Holloway’s case is the third Atlanta-area exoneration in the past 18 months, all three involving DNA evidence that was available but not tested at the time of the original trial.
“The science has been there. What changes is whether anyone bothers to run the test.”
— State Sen. Nabilah Islam (D-Dunwoody), who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee
What Holloway lost
- 22 years of his adult life
- His mother, Pearl Holloway, who died in 2019 — he was not permitted to attend her funeral
- His home, his business (a small auto-repair shop on Bankhead Highway), and all the years in between
- A 20-year-old daughter he last saw as a toddler; she is now 22 and a nursing student at Georgia State
- A clean record, until Friday, of any kind
What’s next for Marcus
He is staying with his sister in southwest Atlanta, and is expected to begin meeting with state re-entry services next week. A GoFundMe set up by the Georgia Innocence Project has raised more than $90,000 in less than 24 hours.
“I don’t know who I am outside of a cage. I’m 51 years old and the last thing I remember is being 29. I have to start from scratch. I just want to start from scratch.”
— Holloway, in his first interview after release
Devon Patterson covers policing, courts, and public money for WACN 21. This is part of an ongoing project tracking wrongful convictions in Fulton County. Reach them at dpatterson@wacn21.com.
