Former death row inmate Ricky Jackson will be for­mal­ly exon­er­at­ed on November 21 in Ohio, after spend­ing 39 years in prison. A judge in Cleveland will dis­miss all charges against Jackson, with the pros­e­cu­tion in agree­ment. Jackson is one of three men con­vict­ed of the 1975 mur­der of Harold Franks. The oth­er two defen­dants, Ronnie and Wiley Bridgeman, were also sen­tenced to death and have filed a peti­tion for a new tri­al, but that peti­tion has not yet been resolved. Jackson’s death sen­tence was vacat­ed ear­li­er, and the Bridgeman broth­ers’ sen­tences were over­turned when Ohio’s death penal­ty was found uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1978. The men were con­vict­ed on the tes­ti­mo­ny of a 12-year-old boy who lat­er recant­ed his tes­ti­mo­ny, and who now has said he did not wit­ness the crime at all. Several peo­ple con­firmed the boy was on a school bus at the time of the crime. No oth­er evi­dence linked the men to the mur­der. A gun and car seen at the crime scene were linked to a man who was arrest­ed in 1978 for anoth­er mur­der, but he was nev­er charged in Franks’ mur­der. In drop­ping the charges against Jackson, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said, ​“The state is con­ced­ing the obvi­ous.” Ricky Jackson will be the 148th per­son exon­er­at­ed from death row in the U.S. since 1973, the fifth in 2014, and the sev­enth in Ohio since 1973.

Jackson will be for­mal­ly released on Nov. 21.

(K. Palmer, ​“Ohio man exon­er­at­ed after 39 years in prison, to be released Friday,” Reuters, November 20, 2014). See Innocence and Arbitrariness. Note: this post­ing was cor­rect­ed from an ear­li­er ver­sion that (based on numer­ous news reports) said that Jackson was already exon­er­at­ed on Nov. 19.

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