Speaker 1: M On May nineteenth, nineteen seventy five, a money owner
Speaker 1: salesman named Harold Frank was leaving a Cleveland, Ohio convenience
Speaker 1: store when two men demanded his briefcase. When he resisted,
Speaker 1: they clubbed him in the head with a pipe, threw
Speaker 1: acid in his face, and fatally shot him twice in
Speaker 1: the chest. The store's co owner, Anne Robinson, saw the
Speaker 1: whole thing go down, and she suffered a bullet wound
Speaker 1: before the men sped off in a green car with
Speaker 1: four hundred twenty five dollars. Then a busload of school
Speaker 1: children were dropped off on the corner, and one local boy,
Speaker 1: Eddie Vernon, ragged to his friends that he had seen
Speaker 1: the murder and knew who did it, his neighbors Ricky
Speaker 1: Jackson and the Brethren brothers Wileye and Ronnie. The three
Speaker 1: young men were arrested and young Eddie Vernon identified them.
Speaker 1: At each one of their trials, all three jurys found
Speaker 1: Eddie Vernon more credible than the wounded store owner Anne Robinson.
Speaker 1: But this is wrongful conviction. Welcome back to wrongful conviction.
Speaker 1: This case is it's like a it's like a glaring
Speaker 1: example of everything that can go wrong and that does
Speaker 1: go wrong in our criminal legal system. But before I
Speaker 1: get off on a tangent here, because this case makes
Speaker 1: me so angry, I'm going to introduce our guests we
Speaker 1: have with us today. The man himself, Kwame a Jammu,
Speaker 1: formerly known as Ronnie Bridgeman. Kwame served decades in prison
Speaker 1: for a crime he had nothing to do with, but
Speaker 1: he's here today, standing strong. Kwame. We're very honored to
Speaker 1: have you here on the show today.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 1: And with him, there is a man named Terry Gilbert.
Speaker 1: Terry is a renowned criminal defense and civil rights attorney
Speaker 1: as well as a community activist, and importantly he's a
Speaker 1: death penalty abolitionist. And I am absolutely thrilled and honored
Speaker 1: to have you here as well. Terry, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jason, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Okay, So, Kwame, I'm going to start with you. You
Speaker 1: were born Ronnie Bridgeman and grew up with your brother Wiley,
Speaker 1: as well as your childhood friend and later co defendant,
Speaker 1: Ricky Jackson, who's been on the show before. We'll have
Speaker 1: his episode linked in the buyout. But anyway, I've invited
Speaker 1: you here to give your own unique side of this story.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the beginning. You all grew up
Speaker 1: on the same block, same street, right we did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, three holes is apart.
Speaker 1: In Kuyahoga County, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Kyhoga County.
Speaker 1: And people that listen to the show have heard so
Speaker 1: many cases from Kuyahoga County because it's arguably the epicenter
Speaker 1: of the whole wrongful conviction world, which is there's a
Speaker 1: lot of competition for that awful distinction. But tell us
Speaker 1: about Kyahoga County. Where is it? What's it like?
Speaker 3: So? Kuyahoga County is more effects known as Cleveland, Ohio,
Speaker 3: and that is the city within the jurishdiction of Cuyahoga County. Cleveland,
Speaker 3: Ohio is a cesspool, if you will. We have three
Speaker 3: different sides to it. All of those sides are policed
Speaker 3: very heavily, as Kerry will let you know in a
Speaker 3: few when you talk. But I was born in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty seven, so my youth in Cleveland was through two riots,
Speaker 3: sixty seven and sixty eight riots, all infused by the poor,
Speaker 3: the disadvantaged, redlined people, people who had been segregated for
Speaker 3: so long it just was tired of being poor.
Speaker 4: The situation on the streets of Cleveland and the black
Speaker 4: community were horrific in the sixties and the seventies as
Speaker 4: it was across the country, and assassination of Martin Luther King,
Speaker 4: Robbie Kennedy, they're so called riots that were happening in
Speaker 4: that context. There was a war against the black community.
Speaker 4: And we had a mayor in the city of Cleveland,
Speaker 4: the first African American mayor in the country of a
Speaker 4: major city, named Carl Stokes, who was elected during this period.
Speaker 4: And the police unions were not very happy about a
Speaker 4: black mayor who was attempting to come up with some
Speaker 4: reforms that would deal with the issues that were happening
Speaker 4: at the time in the black community.
Speaker 2: But those reforms never.
Speaker 4: Took hold because of the resistance of the establishment, the
Speaker 4: police union, the political climate.
Speaker 3: The Cleveland police force was indeed a faction to deal
Speaker 3: with it that particular time. They were beyond corrupt, and
Speaker 3: as history will show, they're still corrupt to this day.
Speaker 3: And so I come up in that, you know, I
Speaker 3: come up in the apthampa that actually because I was
Speaker 3: seventeen years old in nineteen seventy five, when all of
Speaker 3: this happened to me.
Speaker 1: So you're still really a kid, You're a teenager, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure where you had dreams and aspirations like every
Speaker 1: other seventeen year old kid in the country. And I
Speaker 1: know Ricky Jackson and your brother Wiley had already both
Speaker 1: been through the military at this point. So what were
Speaker 1: your plans for the future.
Speaker 3: I tell people all the time that I wanted to
Speaker 3: be a cop. Wow, I had big aspirations and how
Speaker 3: do you say, ideologies of how police worked, And it
Speaker 3: was either going to be a cop or a fireman.
Speaker 3: And in the end, in nineteen seventy five, on that
Speaker 3: terrible day May nineteenth, nineteen seventy five, and mister Harold
Speaker 3: Franks entered our neighborhood there in fair Hill and Cedar
Speaker 3: and lost both his liberty in his life. And I
Speaker 3: became one of the suspects, and then one of the accused,
Speaker 3: and then one who was sentencing convicted to die at
Speaker 3: just seventeen years old, I had no understanding of how
Speaker 3: these people who I supported as a child growing up
Speaker 3: and who I wanted to emulate could do such a
Speaker 3: thing to me.
Speaker 1: And this particular crime fifty nine year old white guy
Speaker 1: of Harold Franks, who was a money oral salesman, and
Speaker 1: when he left the neighborhood grocery store on Fairhill Road,
Speaker 1: he was confronted by two men demanding his briefcase. That's
Speaker 1: two not three. When he resisted, they clubbed them in
Speaker 1: the head with a pipe and splashed acid in his face.
Speaker 1: One of the robbers then shot him twice in the
Speaker 1: chest and fired a shot through the glass front door
Speaker 1: of the store. Mister Franks obviously died, and fifty eight
Speaker 1: year old Anne Robinson, who was a coalner the store,
Speaker 1: was shot once in the neck but miraculously survived, and
Speaker 1: the two robbers fled with the briefcase. They got away
Speaker 1: with about four hundred and twenty five dollars. It's really
Speaker 1: sad when you think of that. So life is so cheap.
Speaker 1: In this case, four lives were so cheap. The two
Speaker 1: robbers they got into a green car parked down the
Speaker 1: street and escaped. Now I'm gonna ask a stupid question, quimet,
Speaker 1: did any of you guys have a green car?
Speaker 3: No, my brother did own a black and white plymous Slaberine.
Speaker 3: They did find that green car, somebody had it and
Speaker 3: everything in the yard all that nothing came of it.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like a very organized type of a crime,
Speaker 1: like maybe even a professional criminal who knew that this
Speaker 1: money order guy was going to be there through acid
Speaker 1: in his face. What would a seventeen year old kid
Speaker 1: who wants to be a copy doing with acid and
Speaker 1: I mean and a gun in this case, let us
Speaker 1: not forget this case wasn't a complicated one. They had
Speaker 1: the green car, they had suspects. They also had Missus Robinson, right,
Speaker 1: didn't Missus Robinson know you guys, yeah right? So here
Speaker 1: it is. She's just been shot and she's the only
Speaker 1: one who actually saw the perpetrators. And we know I
Speaker 1: would his identification is unreliable, but not when you know
Speaker 1: the people, right, right, So think about it. So why
Speaker 1: don't you fill the audience in on how these guys
Speaker 1: became the sole focus of these people who ultimately framed
Speaker 1: them for this crime.
Speaker 4: In addition to the climate that existed at the time. Specifically,
Speaker 4: what happened was a twelve year old boy named Eddie
Speaker 4: Vernon who was on a bus coming home from school
Speaker 4: at the time, and the shooting occurred. The bus was
Speaker 4: in some proximity to the store down about a block away,
Speaker 4: And when they got off the bus and they saw
Speaker 4: the commotion after the shooting, they started talking and one
Speaker 4: kid says, well, I bet you I know who did it,
Speaker 4: and he referred to the nicknames of Ricky, Kwa Man
Speaker 4: and Wileye. So that's stuck in this kid, Eddie Vernons
Speaker 4: mine at twelve years old. Maybe he should tell the
Speaker 4: cops who he thinks might have done this horror for crime.
Speaker 3: Eddie Vernon, I've known him since he was a small kid.
Speaker 3: My brother went to school one of his sisters, and
Speaker 3: we knew the family. Plus he was a paperboy in
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. Anyway, on that particular day, May nineteen, nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy five, myself and Ricky Jackson was just down the
Speaker 3: street at the other end of Bartot Street talking with
Speaker 3: a guy by the name of Lynn Garrett and his girlfriend,
Speaker 3: and we decided to walk around the corner to the store. Now,
Speaker 3: mind you, the store that we decided to go to
Speaker 3: is not the store in question of so, and the
Speaker 3: way to the store we stopped at, unbelievably, Edwar Vernon's
Speaker 3: house and his two sisters, Darlene and Susan, were sitting
Speaker 3: on the porch upstairs, and we began to you know,
Speaker 3: shoot the shit, talking to him, and a car pulls up.
Speaker 3: Inside the car, of course as their father, Eddie, hisself,
Speaker 3: and a young girl by the name of Rose Brown.
Speaker 3: So they opened the window and tell us that hey,
Speaker 3: it's a man up there at the store shot. So
Speaker 3: boogey boogey boogie. We wait for the girls to come
Speaker 3: down and we all go up to the store. Sure enough,
Speaker 3: mister Frankens laying on the ground dead. Cops was everywhere right,
Speaker 3: you know, asking people who had seen this, who had
Speaker 3: seen that that anybody's seen it unbeknown to any of us.
Speaker 3: Young aunt with Vernon, you know, raised his hand and
Speaker 3: said I did I did you know, to which they
Speaker 3: took him in immediately.
Speaker 1: At this point, they were only looking for two assailants,
Speaker 1: not three, so they took Edward down to the police
Speaker 1: station without his parents to get a statement that was
Speaker 1: more faithful to the crime scene. And remember, like Terry said,
Speaker 1: Edward's pardon, this just started off as I bet you
Speaker 1: I know who did it.
Speaker 4: They went and started feeding him more details of the crime,
Speaker 4: creating a narrative to the point when they pushed him
Speaker 4: to say, well, these are the guys that you saw
Speaker 4: commit this murder, which we know now is impossible because
Speaker 4: other people on the bus we interviewed to show that
Speaker 4: there was no way Eddie could have seen this from
Speaker 4: that position. So they take the kid in he's twelve
Speaker 4: years old, They scare him, they manipulate him to sign
Speaker 4: a statement, and about a few days later they brought
Speaker 4: him back and they wanted him to look at a lineup,
Speaker 4: and he's told the police, well, I don't really know who,
Speaker 4: if they did it or not, And one of the
Speaker 4: detectives got upset and started pounding his fist into a
Speaker 4: table and threatened Eddie that if he did not sign
Speaker 4: the document pointing to these young men, that they would
Speaker 4: arrest his parents. Of course, none of this was known
Speaker 4: back then.
Speaker 3: You know, later on we would find out that his
Speaker 3: mother had Ovarian Canton was dying, and so you know,
Speaker 3: you asked yourself, who would you choose, guys in the
Speaker 3: neighborhood or your mother, you know. So he came out
Speaker 3: of that interrogation room, and obviously he wanted to say
Speaker 3: what he thought was his mother from being put in
Speaker 3: the prison toward him, and so he went along with
Speaker 3: the details that had been written in.
Speaker 1: So May twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five. They've now heard
Speaker 1: what they wanted to hear, or they've forced Edward to
Speaker 1: say what they wanted to hear, and they're now ready
Speaker 1: to take this to the next level and go arrest
Speaker 1: kids who I believe they knew were innocent. They had
Speaker 1: the green car, they had suspects. Had they even wanted
Speaker 1: to do just a tiny bit of actual police work,
Speaker 1: they probably would have landed on the two guys who
Speaker 1: actually did this.
Speaker 4: The whole investigation took about a week. There were other
Speaker 4: suspects that were far more viable in terms of who
Speaker 4: did this crime, suspects that were older, I think even
Speaker 4: had a green car, and that had committed other similar
Speaker 4: crimes that was not disclosed to the defense console before
Speaker 4: the trial.
Speaker 3: There were at least six other men who had been
Speaker 3: simultaneously picked up, arrested, and put into Cuyahoga County jail.
Speaker 1: But they ignored these other viable avenues and took the
Speaker 1: easy route with a coerced twelve year old boy. And
Speaker 1: at that point they were only looking for two assailants,
Speaker 1: so their narrative only named Ricky and Wilie, but you
Speaker 1: Kwame were soon written into the story after the night
Speaker 1: that they scooped all three of you up again. This
Speaker 1: was May twenty fifth, nineteen seventy five. The three of
Speaker 1: you had been out that night together and Ricky was
Speaker 1: sleeping over at your house when the cops busted his
Speaker 1: door down, and when they didn't find Ricky, they dragged
Speaker 1: his parents out onto the front lawn with guns to
Speaker 1: their heads.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what happened at my house.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I was sound asleep and I felt something hitting my foot.
Speaker 3: I locked up, cops everywhere, guns pointed, But I didn't
Speaker 3: think about myself, my safety and none of that, because
Speaker 3: I knew that my mother was in the next room.
Speaker 3: And my mother all of my life had suffered from
Speaker 3: heart trouble, which is what she died from, a massive
Speaker 3: heart attacked in nineteen ninety. But I just voted past
Speaker 3: the cops and got into the room where my mother
Speaker 3: was at There was more cops and guns, and I
Speaker 3: let them have it. Man. I was saying everything to him, right,
Speaker 3: so the guy snatched me up. I'll never forget, you know,
Speaker 3: and he said, sorry, it's what you want to do
Speaker 3: with this one, you know this one, and he said
Speaker 3: take him on down. We'd figured out later they had
Speaker 3: arrested me for obstruction police. This and on the way
Speaker 3: downtown was when they realized that I was seventeen. So
Speaker 3: they had to divert going to the county and go
Speaker 3: over to juvenile. And it was only after that they
Speaker 3: wrote me into the story.
Speaker 1: So, as the summer of seventy five was coming to
Speaker 1: a close, You, Wiley, and Ricky were all tried separately.
Speaker 1: He went in front of Judge John Angelata and the
Speaker 1: chief prosecutor at that time, John T. Corrigan, had been
Speaker 1: in office since nineteen fifty six and also presided over
Speaker 1: the wrongful conviction of Tony Ipanovitch and god knows how
Speaker 1: many others. But the trial prosecutor was Dominic del Baso.
Speaker 1: So what did he present?
Speaker 4: Basically, what we had is the three guys lived in
Speaker 4: the neighborhood were young black men, no physical evidence, no
Speaker 4: evidence other than that this twelve year old boy testified
Speaker 4: and the jury believed him.
Speaker 1: It's really madness when you think about they were relying
Speaker 1: on obvious lives. I mean, the kid contradicted himself. Vernon
Speaker 1: originally told police he was on the bus coming home
Speaker 1: from school when he saw the attack. Then later on
Speaker 1: he testified that he had actually gotten off the bus
Speaker 1: already when he saw the attack. That's pretty hard to
Speaker 1: have both of those things be true. And then there
Speaker 1: was a sixteen year old neighborhood girl parents myth. She
Speaker 1: testified that she walked into the store just before the
Speaker 1: attack and saw two men, not boys, two men outside
Speaker 1: the store, and she went on to say that neither
Speaker 1: of the two men were any of you three guys.
Speaker 1: They were not Jackson, they were not the Bridgeman brothers. Also,
Speaker 1: several of Eddie Vernon's classmates testified that he was on
Speaker 1: the bus with them when they heard the gunshots, and
Speaker 1: that none of them were able to see the robbers.
Speaker 1: And the defense also presented witnesses who said that you
Speaker 1: Klaume were elsewhere at the time to crime with your
Speaker 1: brother and another friend, were wrapping up a basketball game.
Speaker 1: And then there was Anne Robinson back to her, so
Speaker 1: she testified she was shot in the neck by a
Speaker 1: bullet that went through the store's front door, but she
Speaker 1: was unable to entify the robbers even though she saw them,
Speaker 1: and even though she knew you guys.
Speaker 3: Well, she said, I know them boys backwards forwards running
Speaker 3: away because they would come and work for me and
Speaker 3: my husband in the store. She said, believe you me,
Speaker 3: I wanted to get the person responsible for killing mister
Speaker 3: Franks and shooting me in my neck. But it wasn't now,
Speaker 3: you know, And that that says a whole lot, because
Speaker 3: she could have been on that train, you know. Ultimately
Speaker 3: her husband started paying it to the Edward Vernon thing.
Speaker 3: But missus Robinson, the wife, heals fast to the fact
Speaker 3: that now and kids didn't do that.
Speaker 4: But it was the testimony of Eddie Vernon which carried
Speaker 4: the day. The jury obviously thought, well, why would this
Speaker 4: kid make it up? You know, And so that was
Speaker 4: the ticket to death row.
Speaker 3: So he would perfetuate this story not three but four
Speaker 3: times because Wiley my brother got a retrial and went
Speaker 3: back and they sunk him again and put him in
Speaker 3: the exact same sale death row that they had originally
Speaker 3: put him in.
Speaker 1: So now we go to September twenty seventh, nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 1: fatal day. Did you hold out any hope at this
Speaker 1: point you had seen a lot already, but did you
Speaker 1: have any did you think that they would still see
Speaker 1: through all of this nonsense.
Speaker 3: I gave up the ghosts. When the judge himself, he
Speaker 3: was instructing the jury. Now listen, because Edward burning up
Speaker 3: know how to spell certain words and can't differentiate east
Speaker 3: from west doesn't mean he's a liar. Doesn't mean that
Speaker 3: when he says that him and he pointed to me,
Speaker 3: is guilty, you see. So in my mind, he had
Speaker 3: already convinced that jury that I was fucking guilty, you know.
Speaker 3: So when they came in, now I'm looked up. They
Speaker 3: all looked down, you know. The women was holding their
Speaker 3: little skirt tails and you know how to do. And
Speaker 3: I say, okay, here we go, you know yeah, And
Speaker 3: when I came back to the reality of what was
Speaker 3: happening to me, I heard him say, until you are dead.
Speaker 3: That's all I fucking heard until you I did.
Speaker 1: This podcast is brought to you by Ohio Justice and
Speaker 1: Policy Center, a nonprofit law firm that seeks justice for
Speaker 1: people to directly impact it by Ohio's criminal legal system.
Speaker 1: OJPC provides free legal services to currently and formally incarcerated people.
Speaker 1: Through its Beyond Guilt Project, OJPC works to free, over
Speaker 1: punish people who have rehabilitated themselves. Ojpc's Second Chance clinics
Speaker 1: help individuals with criminal records remove barriers to employment and
Speaker 1: house it. Ojpc's Human Rights and Prison Project represents people
Speaker 1: who face denial of medical care. In its twenty five
Speaker 1: year history, OJPC has worked at the policy level and
Speaker 1: won numerous victories in Ohio, including ending juvenile life with
Speaker 1: that Parole and exempting seriously mentally ill people from the
Speaker 1: death penalty. To learn more about Ohio Justice and Policy
Speaker 1: Center and how you can support its mission, visit OHIOJPC
Speaker 1: dot org. That's Ohio JPC dot org, Ohio Justice and
Speaker 1: Policy Center. We don't write people off.
Speaker 3: So that morning, you know, the ride as they call it,
Speaker 3: they came in and got me and they give me
Speaker 3: a one nine fifty three, something that is embreded in me.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget. Once I actually got to death role,
Speaker 3: it became one sale all day, every day. They stripped me,
Speaker 3: oh man, storry, calling me girl, little sweetie, and all that,
Speaker 3: making me bend over and spreading my butt cheeks. All
Speaker 3: that stuff I never you know, know nothing about. But
Speaker 3: here's one that I'll never forget either. Jason, Before we
Speaker 3: go to my cell. We go to the end of
Speaker 3: the rings and I got introduced IACSI saw the chair
Speaker 3: this shot. They gonna be waiting on you. Boy, she
Speaker 3: gonna rade you good well.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, the idea that your mom lost
Speaker 1: two of her babies that were kidnapped by the police
Speaker 1: and then planned to be executed by the state is
Speaker 1: as a type of pain that I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: who's not experienced they could ever even begin to imagine,
Speaker 1: and that that is just a tragedy on the tragedy.
Speaker 1: But and here you were on death row down the
Speaker 1: hall from your own brother, like you could. Were you
Speaker 1: guys able to see each other or just hear each
Speaker 1: other or how did that even work?
Speaker 3: You know, everybody's hollering, screaming, so we could do that.
Speaker 3: We passed notes and this that, but one hour out
Speaker 3: of the twenty four hours that we weren't in the sale,
Speaker 3: and that hour, of course you got to go take
Speaker 3: a shot and walk them down the range and you know,
Speaker 3: pass messages for guys. So we got, you know, that
Speaker 3: little time to see each other in passing on the
Speaker 3: rains like that as well as.
Speaker 1: Ricky and luckily, miraculously for you, Wiley, Ricky, and all
Speaker 1: the other guys on Ohio death throughout. A critically important
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight Supreme Court decision came along.
Speaker 3: Right, So, this was that famous Sondra Lockett case where
Speaker 3: she filed against the constitutionality of how everyone was sentenced
Speaker 3: that particular time, that if you got premeditated murder, you
Speaker 3: got sentenced to die. Every judge across the state was
Speaker 3: using the same application she filed, and she won, and
Speaker 3: that released everyone that had been previously sentenced to die.
Speaker 1: Right. This case challenged what factors could be considered by
Speaker 1: the judge of jury when weighing whether or not to
Speaker 1: impose the death penalty, and so what they found unconstitutional
Speaker 1: In Layman's terms, the state had the ability to list
Speaker 1: unl un limited reasons why the death penalty should be
Speaker 1: applied in your case, but there was a very small
Speaker 1: number of mitigating factors that were allowed to be presented
Speaker 1: by the defense.
Speaker 4: The US Supreme Court struck down the Ohio death penalty
Speaker 4: law as they did in other jurisdictions, and then there
Speaker 4: was a wave of new death penalty statues that came
Speaker 4: in where there was more attention to how a jury
Speaker 4: would consider the aggravated circumstances versus mitigating factors. So they
Speaker 4: got off of death row and went into general population.
Speaker 1: Right, So each of you were re sentenced to life
Speaker 1: sentences with the possibility for parole.
Speaker 3: That happened in August of seventy eight. But yeah, there
Speaker 3: was an exception there. An exception was my brother, because
Speaker 3: this was the time that he had went back for
Speaker 3: the new trial.
Speaker 1: Right, your brother was granted a new trial, reconvicted and
Speaker 1: sent back to death row, only to await the paperwork
Speaker 1: that would see him into general population with the same
Speaker 1: sentence as the rest of you a year or so later.
Speaker 1: And Edward Vernon, fifteen years old at the time, had
Speaker 1: testified for a fourth time at that new trial. But
Speaker 1: I understand that his resolve began to waver after that,
Speaker 1: as it had at the lineup before they threatened to
Speaker 1: put his sick mother in prison.
Speaker 3: As time went on, he would go and try to
Speaker 3: recanish stirring, always to the same cops, always to the
Speaker 3: same two cops that had him hooked up in that
Speaker 3: interrogation room in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was detectives Eugene Terpe and James Farmer.
Speaker 3: And of course, they would pat him on his back
Speaker 3: and soothe it over. And long came his life where
Speaker 3: he started getting into trouble and did a prison sentence itself.
Speaker 3: And I would imagine that's long about the time that
Speaker 3: he stopped, you know, trying to be helpful in the
Speaker 3: sense of, you know, telling the.
Speaker 1: Truth, which unfortunately kept that truth hidden for far too long.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, you were all in general population
Speaker 1: now and eventually eligible for parole, so you built a
Speaker 1: solid record inside.
Speaker 3: I was very active in sports. I can really box.
Speaker 3: But one of the things that I did in Lucasville
Speaker 3: more than anything, was barber But I got out of Lucasville.
Speaker 3: I went to Lima Correction Institution in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 3: because Lima had transitioned from being the state hospital, so
Speaker 3: so half of the joint was still medicated. It was nothing. Therefore,
Speaker 3: it was no recreation. Most of all, it was no school.
Speaker 3: And so that's where I excelled. Had a few call hosts,
Speaker 3: its about nine of us actually, and we took that
Speaker 3: proposition to the administration, and the guy, his name is
Speaker 3: David Nell, demand that would become the principal of school,
Speaker 3: and that we opened the school, and I became administrative
Speaker 3: clerk and I did that until I was actually parolled
Speaker 3: from Richland Correction Institution in two thousand and three, which
Speaker 3: is very hard to do for somebody to come from
Speaker 3: death row doing a life sentence and then go through
Speaker 3: the just a mere fact that I arbitrated education in
Speaker 3: that school to so many men, thousands of men got
Speaker 3: at least at least a ged while I was running
Speaker 3: because I wouldn't let him not get it. But now,
Speaker 3: mind you, I had got a five year and then
Speaker 3: at ten year continuance, so it an't like I just
Speaker 3: walked to it. I was doing time, but I was
Speaker 3: also doing something constructive and that was educational.
Speaker 1: So even though this was parole and not exoneration, tell
Speaker 1: us about your newfound freedom in two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: Oh great, The very first day was like I was
Speaker 3: floating to make it even sweeter. You know. Months later
Speaker 3: I would meet the greatest thing that ever happened to me,
Speaker 3: which was my wife, Lashan Ajamul, you know, and I
Speaker 3: married her a year after I got out of prison.
Speaker 1: That's beautiful. Now that you were out, you were on
Speaker 1: a mission to clear all of your names in free
Speaker 1: Wiley and Ricky from prison, and Wiley had actually been
Speaker 1: paroled the year before, but was soon sent back because
Speaker 1: of none other than Eddie Vernon.
Speaker 4: Wiley was at the City Mission while he was on
Speaker 4: parole and runs into Eddie, who was working there as
Speaker 4: a I guess a security guard. They exchanged some words,
Speaker 4: no threats or anything like that. He says, man, why
Speaker 4: don't you do something about it, you know, go to
Speaker 4: the authorities. And he says, ah, you know, I'm afraid
Speaker 4: they're going to prosecute me for perjury and all this
Speaker 4: stuff is Somehow that conversation got to the parole board
Speaker 4: and they looked at it as a guy on parole
Speaker 4: intimidating a witness from his crime, so they flopped him
Speaker 4: and sent him back until twenty fourteen when he was
Speaker 4: exonerated Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So Eddie Vernon held on to his guilty secret for
Speaker 1: another eleven or twelve long years, right, and by now
Speaker 1: he reached out to Terry for help.
Speaker 3: I remember this talk. He said, we need to some
Speaker 3: kind of way put more light on the subject, you know,
Speaker 3: And he told me about this kid, twenty four year
Speaker 3: old kid named Kyle Swinson who wrote for the Cleveland
Speaker 3: Scene magazine. So when I met with this kid, I
Speaker 3: came back to tell my wife like, well, damn, I've
Speaker 3: been in jail on this cat been alive. But man, listen,
Speaker 3: Kyle went into that neighborhood, and to this day, I
Speaker 3: don't know how he retrieved the information that he did,
Speaker 3: but he came back to me talking about things that
Speaker 3: I'd never heard of, you know, like, for instance, the
Speaker 3: situation with Edward and his mother, and just on and
Speaker 3: on and on, you know. And so when about time
Speaker 3: we circle back around to Terry. You ever see the
Speaker 3: picture of the snowball coming down that hill, it just
Speaker 3: started getting bigger. And the next thing I know, my
Speaker 3: wife worked at a spot over here in the West Side,
Speaker 3: and one of the ladies worked there with her went
Speaker 3: to the same church with atwar Vernon, and so she
Speaker 3: told my wife, and my wife told me, and I
Speaker 3: reached out to the pastor. So he did what I
Speaker 3: guess anybody would do. Well, let me take into this
Speaker 3: and I'll get back to you, you know, And so
Speaker 3: I tell cow Man, no go, you know, So Kyle
Speaker 3: get on him. So now this is two people calling him,
Speaker 3: and this is making him like wow. In the meantime,
Speaker 3: edw Vernon had a nervous breakdown. He's in the hospital
Speaker 3: and so it's fast it goes to see him.
Speaker 4: I remember this scene at the hospital with the pastor
Speaker 4: and he said to Eddie, is there something that you
Speaker 4: want to tell me?
Speaker 2: You're in the hospital.
Speaker 4: You know, obviously we hope everything works out, but is
Speaker 4: there something on your mind?
Speaker 2: You want to get off your chest?
Speaker 4: And he then breaks down sobbing and basically admits that
Speaker 4: he had lied in the trial and he put three
Speaker 4: innocent men in prison. And you know, the Innocence Project
Speaker 4: was representing Ricky Jackson. They sent over somebody to get
Speaker 4: an affi David, which was the foundation for the motion
Speaker 4: for a new trial, which then took place in November
Speaker 4: of twenty fourteen. At the hearing before Judge mcmonagall, Eddie
Speaker 4: took the stand and was an incredible witness. The prosecutors
Speaker 4: tried to impeach him, cross examined him, and he deflected
Speaker 4: any challenge and there was a break in the hearing
Speaker 4: and the prosecutors came in and they said, Judge, we
Speaker 4: concede that he should get a new trial. And then
Speaker 4: in the same hearing they said they're dismissing the murdered indictments, right.
Speaker 1: I understand that the prosecutor in twenty fourteen, Timothy McGuinty,
Speaker 1: was not an unreasonable man.
Speaker 4: That was a different prosecutor than we have now. Now
Speaker 4: we have a prosecutor doesn't believe in wrongful incarceration. He
Speaker 4: doesn't believe that people should get compensation. But the one
Speaker 4: that we had back in twenty fourteen saw that there
Speaker 4: was no evidence that.
Speaker 2: They were the perpetrators.
Speaker 3: So Ricky actually called me that day that he got exonerate,
Speaker 3: the very moment my wife breaks that went bad on
Speaker 3: the truck. It's a friend of mine and I was
Speaker 3: changing the brakes and I'm up under the car and
Speaker 3: my phone rang, so, you know, put it on speaker
Speaker 3: and you have a collect call, you know. That's what
Speaker 3: they said. It's Ricky. So, so what's going on? Brother?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And he's almost incoherent, you know, because so he's so ecstatic,
Speaker 3: you know, And I said what he said? I said,
Speaker 3: I'm free.
Speaker 2: It's all over.
Speaker 3: You know, you break down and start crying. I said,
Speaker 3: what the fuck you say?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: He said, man, it's all over, God damn you heav
Speaker 3: me you know, and uh Man almost dock the damn
Speaker 3: car down.
Speaker 2: Ricky was on a Wednesday.
Speaker 4: We didn't want Wiley to spend even one day more
Speaker 4: than he had to, and we were able to get
Speaker 4: before the judge on Friday, and Wiley was exonerated. And
Speaker 4: I'll never forget when Wiley comes out of the jail
Speaker 4: doors into the lobby. These two guys, the moment that
Speaker 4: they hugged was one of the most emotional and ratifying
Speaker 4: moments of my life as a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that moment is etched in your mind and
Speaker 1: your soul as well.
Speaker 3: Without a doubt.
Speaker 4: And so Ricky was exonerated, then two days Wiley, and
Speaker 4: then a month later we were able to get Klombe exonerated.
Speaker 3: But thinking about both my brother Wyley and Ricky Jackson
Speaker 3: haven't spent thirty nine years. These guys had lost so
Speaker 3: much time. When I got out of prison again parole,
Speaker 3: I had an eleven year run, no matter how fucked
Speaker 3: up it was, I still had an eleven year life
Speaker 3: without them, And to this day I feel kind of
Speaker 3: bad about that. You know, had I had a wife
Speaker 3: went through seven cars, right, so as a man, as
Speaker 3: a human being, as a person. I wasn't able to
Speaker 3: make that equal, and I always feel something there, you know.
Speaker 1: Kind of like a survivor's guilt, right. And so even
Speaker 1: though no amount of money could ever replace what you
Speaker 1: all lost, you were all at least finally eligible for
Speaker 1: state compensation. You also won your civil suits against the
Speaker 1: city and the estates of the detectives. But then life
Speaker 1: took a dire turn again. Your brother Wiley had lung cancer,
Speaker 1: and if that wasn't enough, another tragedy struck.
Speaker 3: He had accident, had an auto accident, and it called
Speaker 3: someone's life. He was already in bad shape in and
Speaker 3: out of the hospital. He actually had an oxygen tank
Speaker 3: in the car with him prior to his death. He
Speaker 3: would like have caughing spells and pass out. And so
Speaker 3: I believe that that's what happened to him on the
Speaker 3: night and questioned. He was driving his car late at night,
Speaker 3: rode by a construction site, end up hitting two guys,
Speaker 3: and rolled for another four miles before you a car
Speaker 3: come to a stop. One of the guys that he
Speaker 3: hit passed away. Oh god. And the very next year
Speaker 3: he was gone, Wow.
Speaker 1: That's so much, It's just too much, and I'm so sorry,
Speaker 1: and our condolences of course to the family of that
Speaker 1: construction worker as well. So I guess if there's a
Speaker 1: silver lining to this story, it's that you two were
Speaker 1: there for each other in prison and did have a
Speaker 1: number of years of freedom together before his passing. And
Speaker 1: during that time, all three of you guys, as well
Speaker 1: as your wife, Lashawn, have been quite active in a
Speaker 1: movement that is near and dear to my heart, which
Speaker 1: is death penalty abolition.
Speaker 3: My wife is a member of the OSSI, which is
Speaker 3: Ohio Wants to Stop Executions nineteen ninety seven, ninety eight.
Speaker 3: I think it was her brother was murdered, and so
Speaker 3: she is also a family Victim's member. She do a
Speaker 3: lot of advocating for the people having family members being
Speaker 3: murdered and how the system leaves them. And I am
Speaker 3: very active with their organization OSSI, as there is with
Speaker 3: my organization, Witness to Innocence. I'm the chairman of Witness
Speaker 3: to Innocence. All of our board, with the exception of
Speaker 3: the two volunteers, are death Road exaneries and we have
Speaker 3: been key in the twenty one states that have about
Speaker 3: us still stop using capital punishment in the United States
Speaker 3: and then there's also what we're doing here to stop
Speaker 3: the capital punishment in the state of Ohio.
Speaker 1: Let me just read you something here from the Death
Speaker 1: Penalty Information Center. This is a quote. In February twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, a special report the Innocence Epidemic found that
Speaker 1: Kyahoga ranked second among US counties, tied with Philadelphia. We
Speaker 1: know how bad that is. That's me talking now. But
Speaker 1: back to the quote. For the most exonerations of death
Speaker 1: row prisoners who have been wrongfully convicted, all of those
Speaker 1: wrongful convictions involved police or prosecutorial misconduct or both. Brian
Speaker 1: Stevenson estimates at about ten percent of people on death
Speaker 1: thrower in acent and of course most of those people
Speaker 1: end up being executed. So it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: we execute innocent people in this country one out of
Speaker 1: every ten. Now I think it's higher. So my question
Speaker 1: is for anyone who still believes in the death penalty,
Speaker 1: are you okay with executing innocent people? That's what I'm
Speaker 1: going to leave our audience with is I continue to
Speaker 1: hope that Ohio soon joins the states who have seen
Speaker 1: the wrong of having the option of capital punishment. So
Speaker 1: that said, we're going to be linking in the bio
Speaker 1: to the organizations that you mentioned, Ohions to Stop Executions
Speaker 1: or Atziotse and of course Witness to Innocence. Another thing
Speaker 1: I want to shout out for listeners is Ricky's movie.
Speaker 1: This is a mind blowing piece of film. It's called
Speaker 1: Lovely Jackson. I can't stop thinking about it. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: So we're going to have that linked in the bio
Speaker 1: as well. And one last thing, Terry, I understand you
Speaker 1: wrote a book.
Speaker 4: The name of the book is Trying to Trying Times,
Speaker 4: a lawyer's fifty years struggle fighting for.
Speaker 2: Rights in a world of wrongs.
Speaker 4: It goes back to the late sixties, early seventies up
Speaker 4: until twenty twenty one. It's really about inspir wh wereing
Speaker 4: younger activists and lawyers to take up the fight for
Speaker 4: people's rights.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll be linking that in the bio as well
Speaker 1: and grabbing a copy myself. So now we've come to
Speaker 1: my favorite part of the show. Of course, it's called
Speaker 1: closing arguments, and this works very simply. First of all,
Speaker 1: I'm going to thank you guys Terry Gilbert and Kwameajamu
Speaker 1: for being here and courageously sharing your story. So here's
Speaker 1: how it works. I'm going to turn my microphone off
Speaker 1: for closing arguments, kick back in my chair, and just
Speaker 1: listen to anything else you guys want to share with
Speaker 1: me and our incredible audience. Terry, let's start with you,
Speaker 1: and then Kwame, I'll take us off into the sunset.
Speaker 4: The movement has grown against wrongful imprisonment. It's important for
Speaker 4: people to be aware that the system is flawed, that
Speaker 4: trials are not the end of justice, that things go wrong,
Speaker 4: and people need to understand the nature of the criminal
Speaker 4: system and fight for what is a better avenue to
Speaker 4: achieve justice.
Speaker 2: Also, I just.
Speaker 4: Want to make a note that I don't even know
Speaker 4: if kwameans this. I mean, this is the first public
Speaker 4: mention of it. But we are starting a wrongful conviction
Speaker 4: clinic at Cleveland State University Law School in the fall.
Speaker 4: The Ohio Innocence Project has done a great job and
Speaker 4: they're located in Cincinnati, and we need one in our community.
Speaker 3: I just want to say that with Terry Gilbert, the
Speaker 3: Innocence Project, and all of the many women who stand
Speaker 3: in force to protect those who are down trodden and
Speaker 3: who have been subjugated and arbitrarily and capriciously put in
Speaker 3: prison for absolutely no reason. I am one who will
Speaker 3: stand in every corner that the fight is going on,
Speaker 3: a gang's capital punishment, wrong for incarceration and the cohots
Speaker 3: which institute that policy. So I say to you, my brother,
Speaker 3: thank you so much, thank you for having us today,
Speaker 3: and I want to remind the country that we are
Speaker 3: survivors and that just like Terry Gilbert, I will be
Speaker 3: here tomorrow to Mark's.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. I want to
Speaker 1: thank our production team Connor hall Any, Chelsea, Lyla Robinson,
Speaker 1: Jeff Clyburn and Kevin Warns. The music in this production
Speaker 1: was supplied by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction,
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction podcast, and on Twitter at
Speaker 1: wrong Conviction, as well as at Lava for Good. On
Speaker 1: all three platforms, you can also follow me on Instagram
Speaker 1: at it's Jason Flamm. Wrongful Conviction is a production of
Speaker 1: Lava for Good Podcasts and association with Signal Company Number
Speaker 1: one