An Ohio man, Ricky Jackson, will get $1 million after he spent 39 years in jail for a murder which in fact he did not commit.
An Ohio Court of Claims judge ordered that about $1 million be paid to the wrongly convicted 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.
Jackson was convicted 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.
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.
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Research Associate at Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University
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