A Cleveland Court on Tuesday
dropped all charges against an Ohio man, Kwame Ajamu, 56, one of three accused,
in the 1975 robbery and murder of Harold Franks, a Cleveland-area money order
salesman, but not before spending 28 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
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| Kwame Ajamu, has a word with Judge Pamela A Barker after charges were dismissed against him on Tuesday. Photo Courtesy : Associated Press |
The two
other accused, Ajamu's brother, Wiley Bridgeman, 60, and Ricky Jackson, 57,
were released from prison last month. It was last month that Judge Richard
McMonagle threw out the charges against Jackson, and Judge David Matia tossed
out the conviction of Wiley Bridgeman. The three had been convicted
and sentenced to death in the slaying of a businessman outside on a corner
store on a warm spring day in 1975.
The men
won their freedom after a witness last year recanted his testimony from the
trial, saying he was coerced by detectives at the time. The Witness Edward
Vernon, now aged 53 years, filed an affidavit in 2013 stating that he never saw
the murder take place, but he was told by detectives that if he didn’t testify
against Jackson, his parents would be arrested. The witness, Eddie Vernon, was 12 when Harry
Franks was killed and 13 when he testified against the three men at their
trials in 1975.
In
fact, Vernon wasn't even close. He was riding a school bus, but he said he did
hear the shots that killed Franks at the Fairmont Cut-Rite on Fairhill Road,
which is now Stokes Boulevard. Jackson's attorneys, Mark Godsey and Brian Howe
of the Ohio Innocence Project, called other witnesses who testified that Vernon
was on the bus with them and could not have seen the murder.
Ajamu,
then known as Ronnie Bridgeman, was 17 when he was sent to death row. Jackson
was 19, and Wiley Bridgeman was 20. Their death sentences were later commuted
to life terms. Ajamu later earned parole in 2003. Ajamu championed the causes
of his brother and Jackson after he was released in 2003. The case against the
three began to unravel last year after Vernon admitted to his pastor, the Rev.
Anthony Singleton, that he lied. He said he had been encouraged by the Pastor to
confide to the Ohio Innocence project. Vernon wrote that he had “been waiting to tell the truth about this
for a long time.”
The
three are expected to file for compensation from the Ohio Court of Claims. Each
could receive more than $40,000 for every year they were wrongly held in
prison. In order for the men to obtain compensation, judges must rule that the
three were wrongfully imprisoned.
"I
feel vindicated,'' Ajamu said, reacting to the verdict. "I feel free.'' He said he soon
hopes to go to the grave of his mother, Bessie Mae Bridgeman, who died in 1990.
He said he wants to talk to his mother about the struggle. "If she hears me, and I pray she will, I will tell her about it,''
he said. "She walked the last days
of her life in pain.''
After the hearing, Ajamu
credited Kyle Swenson, a writer for Scene Magazine, who in 2011 dug into the
men’s stories and exposed how justice had been subverted.
Ajamu said he hoped one day to
meet with Eddie Vernon, so he can tell him he understands what
happened and has no ill will toward him.
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