Several years ago, we witnessed a personal racial reckoning by our governor, Ralph Northam, who, after remembering the time he wore blackface as part of a Michael Jackson costume, came to understand how wrong that was. This awakened version of our state leader went on to create a cabinet-level position to address systemic racism, invest in HBCUs and oversee the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Monument Avenue. We appreciate the former governor’s desire to become a better human being, and we trust that his journey has continued as he has reentered the private sector.

While we couldn’t have predicted Northam’s change of heart, we definitely would’ve wagered against our current governor, Glenn A. Youngkin, becoming a social justice warrior. We might still win that bet, but the businessman from Great Falls had us doing a bit of a double take this week, when he took a stand for a man who was wrongfully committed and spent more than 40 years in jail.

At age 20, Marvin Grimm Jr. was wrongfully convicted in 1976 of murdering a 3-year-old child.

He says he was forced to confess. Grimm was sentenced to life in prison, plus additional time on the sex offender registry. He was exonerated in 2024 after DNA and toxicology testing conclusively excluded him from involvement in the crime.

In 2025, the Virginia General Assembly approved House Bill 1776, awarding Grimm $5.8 million in state compensation for the injustice he endured.

Richmond stepped up, too, matching that amount and doubling the total to $11.6 million. Grimm deserves both justice and compensation, and our governor appears willing to go to great lengths to ensure he receives the latter.

This week, the governor threatened, via a letter to the mayor, to withhold state funding to the City of Richmond unless it paid its share of compensation to Grimm. The state’s funding is crucial to the operation of the city’s schools, police department and infrastructure maintenance. Quite a bold stance.

I guess if you’re going to jump in the activist pool, you might as well make a big splash. But wait a minute …

Where was the governor last week, when two African American men, Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson, celebrated their release from prison from being accused of the murder of a police officer? He certainly wasn’t at the event held in their honor, which signaled the start of their new lives as free men. You’d think with his newfound desire to pursue justice for the innocent, he would’ve been front and center or at least have sent a nice letter.

Perhaps he realized that his presence might have been a little awkward — for him. Instead of advocating for the release of the two men from Waverly, the governor has a history of doing the opposite. He criticized President Biden for granting Claiborne and Richardson clemency and being acquitted of the murder in court; he and the current attorney general still seem to want to hold them responsible.

Although both cases involved a murder, allegations of coerced confessions and decades behind bars, what happened to the Waverly Two and to Marvin Grimm Jr. is not exactly the same. And neither, it seems, is the governor’s response. Perhaps if he hadn’t “restructured” the state’s DEI office, someone there might have helped him see the disparity in optics.What message does it send when a white man walks away with $5.8 million and a strongly worded letter from the governor, while two Black men are still waiting for the state to admit they were ever wrong? The details of the cases aren’t identical, but the difference in response is hard to miss. Maybe it’s an oversight. Maybe it’s something else.

We’re glad the governor went to bat for Marvin Grimm. That was the right thing to do, although his approach was heavy-handed. But that’s often how activists start out. There’s still time for our governor to prove that he’ll advocate for justice for everyone, not just people who look like they probably voted for him.