The Deacon's Bench
An Ohio man freed last year after spending 39 years in jail for a murder he did not commit will receive more than $1 million from the state for his wrongful imprisonment.
Ricky Jackson, the longest-held US prisoner to be cleared of a crime, will receive just over $1 million following an order from an Ohio Court of Claims judge on Thursday.
“Wow, I didn’t know that,” Mr Jackson told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which said he learnt of the payment from a journalist.
“Wow, wow, wow, that’s fantastic, man. I don’t even know what to say. This is going to mean so much,” he said.
Mr Jackson was convicted along with Wiley Bridgeman and Bridgeman’s brother, Kwame Ajamu, for the 1975 murder of Harold Franks, a money order salesman in the Cleveland area, after a 12-year-old boy testified he saw the attack, court papers show.
The boy, Eddie Vernon, recanted his testimony years later, and told authorities he had never actually witnessed the crime. There was no other evidence linking Mr Jackson to the killing.
Other witnesses confirmed the then-teenaged Mr Jackson was on a school bus at the time of the killing. He had originally been sentenced to death but escaped because of a paperwork error.
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