A Reedville man who served three decades in prison for an abduction and murder in Lancaster County for which he always maintained he was innocent has been pardoned by Gov. Ralph Northam. Emerson Eugene Stevens, paroled in 2017, was granted an absolute pardon on Friday by the governor who cited an April 2020 opinion from a judge on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who wrote that the evidence overwhelmingly showed no reasonable juror would have convicted him. It was the third absolute pardon won by the The Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law since July.