UPDATE (11/​24): A judge for­mal­ly dropped the charges against Wiley Bridgeman (pic­tured), mak­ing him the 149th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row since 1973. Previously: Cuyahoga County, Ohio pros­e­cu­tors have filed a motion to drop mur­der charges against Ricky Jackson and his co-defen­dants, Wiley Bridgeman and Kwame Ajamu (for­mer­ly known as Ronnie Bridgeman). The three men were con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1975 on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a 12-year-old boy who has since recant­ed and said he did not wit­ness the crime. All three were sen­tenced to death. Bridgeman once came with­in three weeks of exe­cu­tion, but his and Ajamu’s death sen­tences were struck down when Ohio’s death penal­ty was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1978. Ajamu had been released from prison in 2003, but Jackson and Bridgeman had spent 39 years in prison. Both were released after a judge offi­cial­ly dis­missed their charges on November 21. When he was released, Jackson said, ​“The English lan­guage doesn’t even fit what I’m feel­ing. I’m on an emo­tion­al high. You sit in prison for so long and think about this day but when it actu­al­ly comes you don’t know what you’re going to do, you just want to do some­thing.” Judge Richard McMonagle, who dis­missed the charges against Jackson, said, ​“Life is filled with small vic­to­ries, and this is a big one.”

(M. Gillispie, ​“Judge dis­miss­es two men charged in 1975 slay­ing,” Associated Press, November 21, 2014). See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

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