An African-American man who spent nearly 40 years behind bars in the US state of Ohio for a murder he did not commit is suing the city of Cleveland and the police officers whom he says helped wrongfully imprison him.
Ricky Jackson, who was freed in November, filed a federal lawsuit on Tuesday against eight former officers or their estates for his arrest and incarceration following a 1975 Cleveland-area slaying.
“It was the misconduct by Cleveland police detectives and those working in concert with them that led to Mr. Jackson’s wrongful conviction,” according to the suit in US District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.
Three of the detectives and one sergeant named in Jackson’s lawsuit have died in the years since his arrest.
The lawsuit does not specify an amount in monetary damages. He has already received about $1 million of a $2 million compensation award for his wrongful imprisonment.
Jackson was 18 when he was first locked up, and is now 58.
With 39 years in prison, he’s believed to have served the longest time behind bars for someone wrongly incarcerated in the United States, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.