Ohio Inmate Becomes the 119^th Innocent Person Freed from Death Row

On February 28, 2005, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus dismissed all charges against Derrick Jamison for the death of a Cincinnati bartender after prosecutors elected not to retry him in the case. (Associated Press, March 3, 2005). The prosecution had withheld critical eyewitness statements and other evidence from the defense resulting in the overturning of Jamison’s conviction in 2002. Jamison was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 based in part on the testimony of Charles Howell, a co-defendant who had his own sentence reduced in exchange for his testimony against Jamison.

The prosecution withheld statements that contradicted Howell’s testimony and that would have undermined the prosecution’s theory of how the victim died, and would have pointed to other possible suspects for the murder. Two federal courts ruled that the prosecution’s actions denied Jamison of a fair trial. (Jamison v. Collins, 291 F.3d 380 (6th Cir. 2002)).

One of the withheld statments involved James Suggs, an eyewitness to the robbery. Suggs testified at trial that he had been unable to make a positive identification when the police showed him a photo array of suspects. In fact, police records show that Suggs identified two suspects, neither of which was Derrick Jamison. Additional withheld evidence consisted of a series of discrepancies between Jamison’s physical characteristics and the descriptions of the perpetrators given to police investigators by eyewitnesses.

The co-defendant Howell recently testified that he could not remember anything about the crime, and state prosecutors decided not to proceed against Jamison. He remains incarcerated on other unrelated charges. (See also, K. Perry, “‘85 Murder Conviction Dismissed,” Cincinnati Post, Mar. 1, 2005).

Jamison is the 119th innocent person to be freed from death row since 1973 and the first to be exonerated in 2005.

See DPIC’s latest Innocence Report. See also, Innocence.