An innocent man who was sentenced to death. He was just lucky that he fell into the three year period during which the death penalty was ruled unconstitutional.http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-man-ricky-jackson-exonerated-after-39-years-prison-sues-n361531
An Ohio man exonerated last fall after nearly four decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit is suing Cleveland police for their role in putting him away.
Ricky Jackson, in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday, names the city and at least 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 U.S.District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
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. He had been sentenced to life after Ohio declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1978 before reinstating it three years later.
Jackson and two other co-defendants who were also wrongly convicted in the case were freed after a key witness, Edward Vernon, recanted his testimony two years ago claiming the trio shot and robbed money order salesman Harold Franks. Vernon, who was 12 at the time of the shooting, said he had been coerced by detectives.
"His statement implicating Mr. Jackson was a complete fabrication created by the detectives," the lawsuit alleges.
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