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 An Ohio Court of Claims judge on Thursday ordered that just over
$1 million be paid to Ricky Jackson, the longest-held U.S. prisoner
to be cleared of a crime.
"Wow, I didn't know that," 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.
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.
Bridgeman was freed soon after Jackson, after the charges were
dismissed last November. Although Bridgeman had first been freed in
2002, he was imprisoned again for a probation violation, defense
attorneys said.
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A Cleveland judge in December dropped all charges against Ajamu, who
spent 27 years in jail before having his death sentence commuted and
being freed in 2003.
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.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Clarence
Fernandez)
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