News / Human Rights

Ohio black man exonerated after 40 years sues police

Wednesday, 20 May 2015 9:21 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 20 May 2015 3:27 PM ]

Ricky Jackson (center) with lawyers Mark Godsey (left) and Brian Howe, looks skyward after being released last year from his life sentence for a 1975 murder he did not commit.

An African-American man who spent nearly 40 years behind bars in the US state of Ohio for a murder he did not commit is suing the city of Cleveland and the police officers whom he says helped wrongfully imprison him.

Ricky Jackson, who was freed in November, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against eight former officers or their estates for his arrest and incarceration following a 1975 Cleveland-area slaying.

"It was the misconduct by Cleveland police detectives and those working in concert with them that led to Mr. Jackson's wrongful conviction," according to the suit in US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.

Three of the detectives and one sergeant named in Jackson's lawsuit have died in the years since his arrest.

The lawsuit does not specify an amount in monetary damages. He has already received about $1 million of a $2 million compensation award for his wrongful imprisonment.

Jackson was 18 when he was first locked up, and is now 58.

With 39 years in prison, he's believed to have served the longest time behind bars for someone wrongly incarcerated in the United States, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman, 61, were both exonerated after a key witness against them, who was 12 years old at the time, admitted two years ago that he lied during his testimony.

Eddie Vernon, now 52, told a minister who visited him at a hospital in 2013 that he had never actually witnessed the crime. He said Cleveland police detectives coerced him into testifying that the men killed businessman Harry Franks on May 19, 1975.

"His statement implicating Mr. Jackson was a complete fabrication created by the detectives," the lawsuit alleges.

Jackson and Bridgeman, who were both serving life sentences, were initially sentenced to death which was declared unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1978 before reinstating it three years later.

According to a study released last year, one in every 25 death row inmates in the United States is innocent. Approximately 3,000 US prisoners are waiting to be put to death.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the racial ratio of the victims of the death penalty in the US has been striking since the revival of the practice in 1976, with the penalty being disproportionately imposed on blacks and ethnic minorities.

AHT/AGB

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