WATCH ABOVE: Fifty-year-old Ricky Jackson was one of two men who became a free man today after spending nearly 40 years in prison.
CLEVELAND – Two men imprisoned for nearly four decades walked free on Friday after being exonerated in a 1975 murder because the key witness against them recanted his testimony.
A judge dismissed the cases against Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman after the main witness said Cleveland police detectives coerced him into testifying that the men, along with Bridgeman’s brother, killed a businessman.
Prosecutors on Thursday filed the motion to dismiss all charges against the three men, who were sentenced to death at the time of the conviction. Ronnie Bridgeman, 57, who is now known as Kwame Ajamu, was released from prison in January 2003. He attended the hearings of both men Friday.
“The English language doesn’t even fit what I’m feeling,” Jackson, 57, said as he exited the building Friday. “I’m on an emotional high.”
Eddie Vernon, who was 13 at the time of the killing, said police detectives coerced him into testifying that the three killed businessman Harry Franks on May 19, 1975.
The three were sentenced to death under an Ohio capital punishment law that was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1978.
The Bridgemans’ death sentences were commuted to life in prison after the ruling. Jackson’s sentence was commuted in 1977 on a technicality – a mistake in jury instructions.
The state’s current death penalty law was enacted in 1981 and has never been found unconstitutional.
The three-year process that led to their exonerations began with a story published in Scene Magazine in 2011 that detailed flaws in the case, including Vernon’s questionable testimony. Vernon, now 52, did not recant until a minister visited him in 2013. Vernon broke down during a court hearing for Jackson on Tuesday as he described the threats by detectives and the burden of guilt he had carried for so long.
The Ohio Innocence Project took up Jackson’s cause after the Scene article even though there was no DNA evidence, the hallmark of Innocence Project cases.
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