Ohio Death Row Exonerees Reach $18 Million Settlement with City of Cleveland

The city of Cleveland will pay a record $18 mil­lion dol­lars to set­tle a civ­il rights law­suit by three for­mer death-row pris­on­ers who, as a result of police mis­con­duct, spent more than a com­bined 80 years impris­oned for a mur­der they did not com­mit. Kwame Ajamu (pic­tured, left), his broth­er Wiley Bridgeman (pic­tured, cen­ter), and Rickey Jackson (pic­tured, right) were con­vict­ed in 1975 of the rob­bery and mur­der of Harold Franks based on the coerced false tes­ti­mo­ny of a 12-year-old boy, Eddie Vernon. Police also fab­ri­cat­ed evi­dence and with­held evi­dence of the men’s innocence. 

The men were tried less than four months after the mur­der, but their exon­er­a­tion took near­ly four decades. Vernon, the key wit­ness, recant­ed and tes­ti­fied that police had threat­ened to jail his par­ents if he did not coop­er­ate. At the time of the police threats, Vernon’s moth­er was suf­fer­ing from can­cer. When they were con­vict­ed, Ajamu was 17 years old, Jackson was 18, and Bridgeman was 20. No phys­i­cal evi­dence linked any of them to the murder. 

All three men were sen­tenced to death, but Jackson’s death sen­tence was vacat­ed and Ajamu and Bridgeman’s sen­tences were reduced when Ohio’s death penal­ty was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al in 1978. Ajamu and Bridgeman were both paroled pri­or to their exon­er­a­tions, but Jackson remained in prison until 2014. At the time of his release, Jackson had spent 39 years, three months and nine days in prison, which was then the longest any American exoneree had been imprisoned. 

The set­tle­ment is the largest ever award­ed in an Ohio police mis­con­duct case. Jackson will receive 40% of the set­tle­ment, and Bridgeman and Ajamu will split the rest. When the set­tle­ment was reached, Ajamu said, ​“Money can­not buy free­dom and mon­ey cer­tain­ly does not make inno­cence,” but explained that he and the oth­ers had agreed because ​“we now know that you have no oth­er rea­son and no oth­er recourse but to tell the world that you wronged three lit­tle black boys 45 years ago.” 

Terry Gilbert, one of Ajamu’s lawyers, said, ​“Forty-five years lat­er, we now can say that we have some sense of com­ple­tion and jus­tice in this case.” Elizabeth Wang, an attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing Jackson, said, ​“What is 39 years of your life worth? Nobody can put a num­ber on that. No amount of mon­ey can com­pen­sate them for what they went through.” In a state­ment, law firm Friedman and Gilbert, which rep­re­sent­ed Bridgeman and Ajamu, said, ​“This law­suit and set­tle­ment expose the egre­gious mis­con­duct by police who worked up the case, fab­ri­cat­ed false evi­dence, with­held evi­dence of inno­cence, and then coerced Vernon into lying on the stand at tri­al. The set­tle­ment also marks the City of Cleveland’s fail­ure to mon­i­tor and train rank and file police in the 1970s, reflect­ed in the department’s wide­spread cul­ture of racist polic­ing and mis­con­duct with impunity.” 

Under Ohio’s com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem for wrong­ful con­vic­tions, the men had received small­er pay­ments begin­ning in 2015. The same year, they filed suit against the city of Cleveland and the detec­tives who had engaged in mis­con­duct on their case. The suit was dis­missed by a fed­er­al dis­trict judge in 2017, but in 2019, a fed­er­al appeals court allowed most of the claims to pro­ceed. The case had been sched­uled for a civ­il tri­al this sum­mer before the set­tle­ment was reached. 

Cleveland police and pros­e­cu­tors have a long his­to­ry of mis­con­duct in mur­der cas­es. On May 1, 2020, a Cuyahoga County tri­al judge grant­ed a new tri­al to Isiah Andrews in the 1974 mur­der of his wife after the Ohio Innocence Project dis­cov­ered excul­pa­to­ry police reports that had nev­er been turned over to the defense. The reports impli­cat­ed a man who went on to com­mit addi­tion­al acts of vio­lence against women. In March 2020, Melvin Bonnell, who was sen­tenced to death in 1988, asked the Ohio Supreme Court to vacate his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence after his lawyers dis­cov­ered phys­i­cal evi­dence from his case that Cuyahoga County pros­e­cu­tors had repeat­ed­ly insist­ed since the mid-1990s had been lost or destroyed. County pros­e­cu­tors also uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in the case of Joe D’Ambrosio, who was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1989. County pros­e­cu­tors con­tin­ued to hide that evi­dence and oppose D’Ambrosio’s release for anoth­er two decades. 

The Cleveland police depart­ment also faces con­tin­u­ing accu­sa­tions of mis­con­duct. Between November 2014, when the depart­ment came under nation­al scruti­ny for the shoot­ing of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, and February 2017, when the Cleveland Plain-Dealer inves­ti­gat­ed police set­tle­ments, the city paid 26 set­tle­ments total­ing $13.2 mil­lion. Most of the set­tle­ments stemmed from cas­es involv­ing police vio­lence against civil­ians, includ­ing a $6 mil­lion set­tle­ment for the shoot­ing death of Rice and $2.25 mil­lion each in the deaths of Tanisha Anderson and Dan Ficker.