Reuters - 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, court records show.
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 Jackson to the killing.
Other witnesses confirmed the then-teenaged 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.
The 39 years Jackson spent in jail was the longest time a prisoner had been held before being exonerated, the Ohio Innocence Project, which provided legal counsel to Jackson, and the National Registry of Exonerations said.
2 comments:
$25,641 a year?? That doesn't begin to be enough compensation!
It should be a billion, this is about right. Or better those who kept him in there also do 39 years, that would be justice.
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