by Kyle Swenson
The next morning I was at court, red-eyed and twitchy, at 8:30 A.M. sharp, for round two. McGrath was back on the offensive. Ed Vernon slumped in the witness chair. “You testified that the police were feeding you this information. So does that mean that they were saying, ‘Ed, here is what happened, I would like you to state that back to me and I will write it down in the report’?”
“What they did was, after I told them that I was a witness, that I saw who did it, they begin to give me information, and they were typing stuff up.”
“Can you give us an example of how they would give you information, Ed?”
“They asked me, ‘When you saw what happened, did you see who it was? Did you see somebody standing out in front of the store? Was it two males standing out in front of the store?’ This is the kind of stuff that they were giving me.”
“So they were asking you leading questions?” the attorney asked. “With information contained in the questions?”
“Yes.”
The state’s case wrapped with one more piece of evidence, a would-be courtroom stunner that flopped in a spectacular, sickening fashion. It would have been funny, if it weren’t so infuriating. In her cross-examination of Ed, McGrath introduced a sworn affidavit written by a retired Cleveland police sergeant now living in Arizona, Joseph Paskvan. In the document, the officer claimed to be one of the uniformed cops at the Cut-Rate after the murder asking the crowd for information. Paskvan said Ed approached him and his partner and named Rickey Jackson, Ronnie Bridgeman, and Wiley Bridgeman as the assailants.
Hearing this in the gallery, I started squirming in my seat again. The sequence laid out in the police documents, at the trials, and as well in Ed’s new testimony seemed to clearly establish the boy never told the uniformed officers the names of the assailants at the scene. He only said he had information, not what the information was. All the other accounts agreed on this. All these accounts also were in accord on how Ed didn’t know the full names of the Bridgeman brothers. He only knew their nicknames. Yet here was a retired Cleveland police officer claiming, under oath in a written affidavit, that Ed had approached the uniformed officers on the day of the crime with all three full names. In the best light, Paskvan’s memory was faulty; put a more critical spin on the situation, and you see an officer possibly lying in court to bolster a prosecution.
Later, I looked Paskvan up. Between 1973 and 1985, he was involved in nine shootings, three of them fatal. All the victims in these shootings were minorities.1 In the final shooting in 1985, Paskvan killed a twenty-three-year-old Hispanic man because he believed the deceased was waving a rifle. It turned out to be a BB gun. As with the eight previous shootings, Paskvan was cleared of any wrongdoing, but the officer became a headache for the department. More than nine thousand Clevelanders signed a petition asking for his termination; city council members began calling Paskvan the “exterminator” due to his track record; and the officer’s own police chief later referred to Paskvan as a “menace” and fought to keep the officer stranded on desk duty.2 And here he was in 2014, sticking up for the department, right or wrong.
Pointing out the gaping holes in Paskvan’s affidavit was Brian Howe’s first order of business when he stepped back to the podium. Howe then worked through the other points McGrath had tried to wrench from the witness, carefully patching up the damage while emphasizing the central point.
“Did you see Rickey Jackson shoot anyone at all on that day?” he asked Ed.
“No.”
“Did you see Ronnie Bridgeman shoot anyone that day?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone beat Mr. Franks?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone steal his briefcase?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone throw a cup in his face?”
“No.”
“Did you see anyone escaping in a green car?”
“No.”
“No further questions,” Howe said.
By the end of his testimony, Ed could barely keep his head up. “Oh, Jesus,” he moaned. “I am tired.”
After Ed’s testimony, I shot out of my seat. Ed was in the hallway, slowly drifting toward the elevators. I caught up with him and introduced myself, putting my hand out before he had an opportunity to fully string together who I was. Whatever apprehension he may have had about speaking with me was buried under weariness from his grueling two-day appearance in court.
“Honestly, I just wanted to say thank you for doing this,” I said.
Ed’s eyes ducked mine, hanging on the hallway carpet. “I just want them to be free.”
* * *
The state called Tommy Hall next. Now fifty-three and bulky in a tracksuit, Ed Vernon’s former neighborhood friend clearly had little patience for being in a courtroom. He’d only turned up after being subpoenaed.
The witness had apparently been called by the state to shoot down another of Ed’s assertions: that Hall himself had told Ed on the day of the crime it was Rickey, Buddy, and Bitsy behind the robbery. Hall claimed in the courtroom he’d said no such thing. “Why would I say that?” he testified. “I didn’t see nothing.”
But Hall also rolled a grenade into the state’s case as well. Diving back into his recollections of the day of the murder, Hall told the court he was on the bus and heard the shots but didn’t see the crime. After being let off the bus, he and the rest of the neighborhood kids made for the store. Among the kids on the bus that day: Ed Vernon. The witness bolstered Vernon’s own testimony on that point. Hall left the stand with both sides unsatisfied with the information he’d offered.
By late morning on the second day of the hearing there was one final witness scheduled to speak: Rickey Jackson. Brian Howe announced his name in the courtroom, and the defendant slowly rose from the table, the links of his arm and leg shackles ringing gently with his steps. “State your name for the record,” Howe asked his client.
“Rickey Jackson,” he said, with a voice that resounded strongly through the courtroom, a voice belonging to a man not answering queries but finally demanding answers.
“Mr. Jackson, on May 19, 1975, did you shoot Harold Franks?”
“No, I did not,” Rickey said, his words calm but full of resolve.
“Did you throw anything in Harold Franks’s face?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you steal anything from Mr. Franks?”
“No, I did not.”
“Did you shoot Anna Robinson on May 19, 1975?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“You were put on trial, convicted in this case back in 1975. And this was a capital case. Do you remember what your original sentence was?”
“Death by electricity.”
“Did the prosecutor and your lawyer ever talk about a deal before the trial happened back then?”
“Yes, they did. I was to plead guilty to committing this crime and I wouldn’t be sent to death row.”
“Did you take that deal?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Rickey said, a sudden flare of emotion cracking his voice, “I am innocent.”
Howe gave his client a moment to collect himself. “How did you feel as you were being sentenced?”
“It was a traumatic experience,” Rickey said, wiping tears out of his eyes. “My life was just … my life was being taken from me with no reason.”
When the state began its cross-examination, the questioning was handed off to another prosecutor, Saleh Awadallah. Here, the office was planning to leverage a surprise piece of evidence. In 2010, Rickey made an appearance in front of the parole board—his fifth—where the committee noted in a report that the “offender takes responsibility for his actions and does show good insight into his offense.” Wasn’t this an admission of guilt, Awadallah asked the witness.
“I felt a lot of empathy for Mr. Franks and his family about what happened,” Rickey explained. “The way he was mu
rdered, nobody should have to die like that. And I have always felt empathy towards him and his family because, like him, I am a victim, too.”
He continued: “I always expressed remorse about what happened in the way that he died whenever I go to the parole board, and for some reason they wanted to misconstrue that as an admission of guilt on my part. I just wanted them to understand that I wasn’t taking the situation lightly.”
Rickey went on, his words bobbing on the occasional wave of emotion. “I felt empathy for that man and his family. I had to sit in court while his wife and two sons sat there. I felt that. I felt her pain because I was being made a victim, too.”
Awadallah continued to batter Rickey on how his comments before the parole board could only have been an admission of guilt. Rickey remained polite and firm, never taking the bait to become frustrated or angry. “I spent thirty-nine years of my life paying for something I didn’t do,” he explained. “The Franks family has no closure. The people that did this are still out there.”
Howe took one last opportunity to counter the state’s insinuations. “You were asked a number of questions about these parole statements from 2010 and 2013,” the attorney said. “But back in 1975, when you were under the threat of being executed, did you ever think that maybe they might spare your life if you admitted that you were guilty?”
“Honestly, the thought never crossed my mind about having my life spared, because I was in the right and I felt like the truth would come to light.” Rickey paused. “So I stood my ground.”
* * *
“What happens now?” I asked Howe as the courtroom cleared for lunch.
“Well, we’ll come back here and both sides will give final arguments. After that, the judge will take everything under advisement and issue a ruling in a few weeks.”
“So it’s not like Rickey will be walking free today?” I said, only half serious.
“No,” Howe said with a smile. “Nothing like that.”
The hearing was set to reconvene again at 2:30 P.M. I stayed inside the courtroom for a few moments, picking out a text message to Kwame, then walked the hallways of the Justice Center. The building’s busy-hive atmosphere had cooled into a slower lunch-hour rhythm. The morning dockets had been called, and the rooms were empty. Down below in the lobby atrium, heel clicks and occasional shouts bounced off the stone walls and glass windows. Lawyers casually chatted or eyeballed paperwork. The metal detectors at the entrances spit out infrequent beeps and pings. The feeling inside the building was that business was done, disputes had been settled, decisions already made.
I was worried, although I couldn’t reason out why. For two days I’d sat in the courtroom. Listened to each witness. Caught every comment. In my mind, Ed’s reversal rang true. And his account was backed up by other testimony. But I was still uneasy. The Cleveland stories I knew, the ones I had grown up reading, even the stories I’d written myself, they all ended with disappointment: your best shot scuttled, the final opening blocked, the full effort falling short. The law was a complicated mechanism; right and wrong, blame and accountability, injury and redress were all fed into one end of a convoluted process and came out the other bent beyond recognition. It was so clear—these men were innocent, they had to be released and their records wiped clean. But the simplest truth seemed the most vulnerable to distortion.
By 2:30 P.M., Rickey’s attorneys were back inside the courtroom. The gallery was nearly empty now. Most of the OIP interns were already heading back to Cincinnati. The curious onlookers had melted off elsewhere. Only an attorney from Terry Gilbert’s law firm sat with me in my row as we all watched the clock inch past the start time. Ten minutes later, six attorneys from the prosecutor’s office walked in together. Bringing up the rear was the prosecutor himself, Tim McGinty, gripping a coffee mug. The county’s top law enforcement official walked up to the bench to speak privately with Judge McMonagle.
“All right,” the judge announced once the prosecutor had returned to the table. “What’s your pleasure, counsel?”
“Your Honor, Tim McGinty on behalf of the State of Ohio,” the white-haired former judge announced in an all-business tone. “We are waiving final argument on the issue. The State, in light of the evidence produced by the defense at this hearing, and the total recantation by the key witness, hereby withdraws its motion in opposition for a new trial. The State concedes the obvious. It is no longer in a position to retry the case,” he continued. By dropping the opposition to Rickey’s petition for a new trial, and publicly acknowledging the state could no longer try the case, McGinty was pressing the appropriate legal button to acknowledge the defendant’s innocence. Rickey’s face dropped into his hands. “We in doing so fully recognize that the result will be the eventual release of Mr. Jackson and eventually the other codefendant. If the Court does grant their motion to which we no longer oppose, we will move for a dismissal today.”
“Thank you,” McMonagle said. “No objections?” he asked Howe. “No objections,” the young attorney shot back.
“So based on the comments by Mr. McGinty, withdrawing the motion, I will grant that motion for a new trial.” The judge turned to Rickey. “Mr. Jackson, we are going to get you back here on Friday just to make sure we get the paperwork done and order your release.”
“Thank you, sir.” Rickey struggled to speak, staccato sobs jumping from his chest. “Thank you, everybody.”
“Mr. McGinty,” the judge said, “you made the right choice.”
The jagged cries were all I could hear. The moment felt cut off from what had come before or what would follow later. An unreal quality soaked in at the edges, as if this was all a mistake. It was Rickey’s tears that validated what we had all just heard. The institutional carpet under my shoes, the jaundiced lighting from the fixtures—it all looked the same. Yet it felt like we’d been picked up and set down in an entirely different place.
The attorneys and OIP staffers formed a tight circle around Rickey’s chair. I elbowed up to the front, looking directly into his eyes. “Thank you for coming,” Rickey told me.
“Absolutely,” I said, failing to find anything more meaningful to say.
“Can you believe this?”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t believe this.”
“Thank you,” he told his attorneys. “Everybody did a great job. I’m in shock. I can’t believe this,” he repeated. “I can’t believe this is over.”
“Do you want to call someone?” an OIP staff member asked. The woman explained this might be his only chance for some time to personally share the news.
“I can’t even think right now,” Rickey responded, swinging his head. Then from memory he recited a number. The OIP staffer dialed on her iPhone and held it to Rickey’s ear.
“Hello?” he said. “Who is this?… This is Rickey … Hey, it’s over, man …
“It’s over, bro. I’m coming home … Friday … Friday, man … Friday. I don’t know what time, but be here to get me, please … I’ve got to go … I’ll talk to you Friday … let everybody know … I love you. Bye.”
I recognized the tiny voice shouting through the phone static on the other end. It was Kwame.
Rickey glanced around the courtroom, his face crumbling in exhaustion. “I just want to go lay down. I didn’t believe this was going to be over.”
14
NOT YOUR TOWN ANYMORE
Cleveland, November 21, 2014
Kwame he couldn’t be sure about, but Rickey remembered the last time he saw Wiley. Hard to forget. Lucasville, 1980. He was working as a porter, scooting up and down the range on errands. A guy he knew mentioned his friend had just been transferred to the block from isolation, one of the guys from his case, Wiley. “That’s my brother,” Rickey excitedly replied.
Behind the bars of his cell, Wiley seemed the same. The two talked easily for a few minutes. But the reunion was short-lived. Something changed, a switch flipped in Wiley. He began mumbling strange words. Rickey failed to underst
and what he was saying. Then Wiley started screaming, bashing his fists into the wall, overturning the bed. By the time the guards got the cell open, Wiley had smashed the sink into pieces. Rickey, bewildered and unnerved, stepped back from his friend’s blunt rage. Wiley seemed to want to tear the whole place down brick by brick.
That memory and many more were skating the edges of his mind now as he waited in a holding cell at the Justice Center for his release. Wiley and Kwame. His mother. Cleveland. To keep himself straight, he tried to focus on sunlight. Rickey knew it was out there waiting for him. Not midday glare squeezing through the mesh wiring of a window, or what rubbed the tops of the high prison walls, setting the metal rings of wire on fire. Clean full light out of a fat sun in the blue sky.
Before that, however, Rickey had to get through everything sitting between him and those first free rays: the elevator ride down thirteen stories to the sheriff’s intake office; the paperwork and waiting; waiting and paperwork; the push through the heavy glass door into a hallway slick with overhead industrial light and dancing with cell phone flashes; the forty or so television cameras and as many reporters from around the world waiting to capture his first words as a free man; then down the hallway, into the Justice Center atrium, over the chipped marble flooring, past lines waiting for the elevators and the suited men and women at the snack bar and the metal detectors, to the revolving doors leading to the outside world.
He didn’t know about any of that yet. He was just waiting and thinking, and as he passed the time, wearing the stiff new outfit from Walmart, the jailhouse walls began talking at him.
* * *
I was supposed to be on a flight back to Miami on Wednesday morning, but I’d skipped it. I wasn’t going to miss Rickey’s release.
I was staying with my friend in Tremont, a trendy neighborhood just west of downtown popular with recent transplants to the city. The houses are all two-story structures slotted shoulder to shoulder on tiny lots, modest dwellings for the Slavic and German immigrants who filled this neighborhood in the early twentieth century and worked in the factories and refineries just down the hill. The steel mills and chemical factories were still there, and as I was getting ready in the quiet house I looked out the window past my friend’s small backyard to the industrial acres below. Rooster tails of steam and exhaust rose from vents and smokestacks, the ice in the air deepening the discharge into bold mushroom clouds. Church bells clanged, old-world religion in the air. My phone peeped. Kwame and LaShawn were here to pick me up.
