A court in Cleaveland Ohio had acquitted three men on Tuesday,December 9, 2014 after spending several years in prison for crimes they never committed.
In her documents, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Mary McGrath, said her office considers the trio of 60-year-old Wiley Bridgeman, his 56-year-old brother Kwame Ajamu and Ricky Jackson,57, innocent of the robbery and murder of a Cleveland-area money order salesman Harold Franks, in 1975.
Following their prosecution, two out of the three exonerated men, Jackson and Bridgeman, spent 39 years behind the bars while Ajamu, formerly known as Ronnie Bridgeman, spent 27 years in prison custody.
Their convictions came to be after a key witness, Eddie Vernon testified in court that he had lied to the police detectives about the case when he was just 12.
According to Cleaveland dot com, Cuyahoga County prosecutors say they will not fight attempts by three men to gain more than $4.1 million in compensation for their wrongful imprisonments of a 1975 murder that they didn’t commit.
Ajamu who broke down in tears and wept profusely after the news of his freedom was broken to them in court said, “I’m so happy today that this battle has come to an end.”
Originally, he was sentenced to death but it was vacated because of a paperwork error although he later earned collocation of justice in 2003 which by virtue permitted him to leave the prison before the end of his sentence on the grounds that he will behave well.
After the court session, Ajamu expressed his immense gratitude to his wife and the attorneys who made it possible before he locked the judge and the prosecutor in a warm embrace.
The two other accused, Ajamu’s brother, Wiley Bridgeman, 60, and Ricky Jackson, 57, were released from prison last month.
