He repeatedly thanked the Ohio Innocence Project, and he thanked county prosecutors for showing the integrity to drop the case. The witness, Edward Vernon, now 53, recanted his testimony last year, saying he was coerced by detectives, according to Cuyahoga County court documents. Vernon wrote that he had “been waiting to tell the truth about this for a long time.” 
 
 “A lot of people think I should be mad,” said Jackson, but “in ’75, he was a 12-year-old-kid.” Jackson said “it took a lot of courage” for the witness to recant his statement. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in court Tuesday that without an eyewitness there was not much of a case. Testimony from a 12-year-old witness helped point to Jackson as the triggerman and led a jury to convict all three. Wiley Bridgeman had remained in prison, while his brother was released after serving more than 25 years in prison. A Cleveland judge on Wednesday had dropped all charges against Ricky Jackson, 57, and Wiley Bridgeman, 60, allowing for the pair’s release. Vernon said he confided in a pastor several years after meeting with Bridgeman, and the pastor encouraged him to reach out to the Innocence Project. Jackson was 19 when he was convicted along with Bridgeman and Bridgeman’s brother, Ronnie, in the 1975 shooting death and robbery of Harold Franks, a Cleveland-area money order salesman. Plain Dealer reporter Rachel Dissell contributed to this report.
– After nearly 40 years in prison, a man convicted in a 1975 Cleveland slaying has walked out of the county jail as a free man. Ricky Jackson, 57, was dismissed from the Cuyahoga County Jail and walked out of the adjoining courthouse this morning about an hour after a judge dismissed his case. The dismissal came after the key witness—then a 13-year-old boy—at trial against Jackson and brothers Wiley and Ronnie Bridgeman recanted last year and said Cleveland police detectives coerced him into testifying that the three killed businessman Harry Franks on the afternoon of May 19, 1975. About two hours later, Wiley Bridgeman was also dismissed; Ronnie Bridgeman, who now goes by the name Kwame Ajamu, got out on parole in 2003, NBC News reports. "Finally, finally," Jackson said as he left the Cleveland Justice Center Complex, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. Jackson, who was just 18 when he entered prison, offered gratitude toward the Ohio Innocence Project (which says that of all exonerated US prisoners, he spent the most time behind bars) and county prosecutors and absolved Eddie Vernon, the boy whose testimony helped put him away. "I don't hate him," he tells the Plain Dealer. "He's a grown man today, he was just a boy back then. It took a lot of courage to do what he did." Because when it comes down to it, he's just happy to finally be free. "The English language doesn't have the words to express how I'm feeling right now.''