CLEVELAND (AP) — Kwame Ajamu was underneath his truck fixing a fuel pump when his childhood friend, Ricky Jackson, called and asked if Ajamu could give him a ride home one Friday.

Ajamu, once known as Ronnie Bridgeman, Jackson and Ajamu’s brother, Wiley Bridgeman, were sentenced to death at separate trials for the 1975 slaying of businessman Harry Franks outside a corner grocery store in Cleveland. They were barely old enough to shave when judges sent them to death row. Ajamu was 17, Jackson was 19 and Bridgeman was 20.

The call from Jackson on Tuesday came from a Cleveland courtroom where Eddie Vernon, who as a 13-year-old boy testified at the men’s trials as a witness of the shooting, had recanted his damning testimony nearly 40 years later.

“I had to scoot out from under that truck to keep from killing myself,” Ajamu said with a laugh when describing the call from Jackson. “It just blew my mind!”

Cuyahoga County prosecutors filed a motion Thursday to dismiss charges against the three men. Since Vernon told Judge Richard McMonagle that he had lied to police, prosecutors conceded on Tuesday they no longer had a case.

Ricky Jackson, who spent nearly 40 years behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit, will be freed Friday at 9 a.m.

The Ohio Innocence Project (OIP) at University of Cincinnati seeks to identify inmates in Ohio prisons who are actually innocent of the crimes they were once convicted of committing.

Jackson, UC said Thursday, is the 18th person to be freed since it began work in 2003. Over the project’s run, more than 600 donors have contributed more than $5.2 million toward its efforts.

Ajamu got out of prison in January 2003. Jackson was at a prison work camp but was then placed in county jail. Bridgeman is at a northwest Ohio prison. If transportation issues are worked out and Bridgeman is brought to Cleveland, all three could be reunited Friday, breathing the sweet air of freedom. Ajamu finds that prospect “mind boggling.”

Ajamu can never forget the moment when a judge sentenced him to the electric chair.

He spent his 18th birthday on death row. His mother, a brother and a sister died while he was in prison. His brother got to within three weeks of an execution date.

Both brothers’ sentences were commuted to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in 1978. Jackson’s sentenced was commuted to life a year earlier because of an error in the jury instructions. Bridgeman was released from prison in 2002 but was sent back on a parole violation.

“These last few months, I’ve been 17 all over again,” Ajamu said. “I had to relive in my mind and heart my mother walking down the street the last few days of her life with that shame. She knew we didn’t do it, but the world didn’t.”

Despite spending 27 years in prison for a crime he maintains he did not commit, Ajamu says he tries not to dwell on the negative. He says he figures “there’s always a story worse than mine.” And he says he forgave Vernon years ago because he knew such a young boy could not have concocted the story he told at trial on his own.

In 2011, Scene Magazine wrote an article about the case that called into question Vernon’s testimony. But it wasn’t until a minister visited Vernon at a hospital in 2013 that Vernon came clean. In an affidavit submitted by the Ohio Innocence Project, which represents Jackson, Vernon said he was coerced and threatened by detectives into implicating the three men after repeating gossip he’d heard to a police officer. Vernon has acknowledged that he was on a school bus parked down the block when the shooting occurred and did not see Jackson or the Bridgemans kill anyone.

Vernon said detectives threatened to arrest his parents if he did not stick to the story they wanted him to tell. There was no physical evidence tying the three men to the slaying, only the boy’s testimony.

According to court filings, detectives had solid leads. A 16-year-old who knew Jackson and the two brothers from the neighborhood testified that she saw two strange men outside the store when she went inside to buy chips that day. She said she hid at the back of the store when gunshots rang out.

A police informer gave detectives a license plate number that matched a vehicle described as the getaway car. They questioned the man but did not pursue charges. The mother of another possible suspect called police to tell them she thought her son had something to do with the killing and that he’d stolen his grandfather’s .38-calliber revolver. Franks was killed with a .38.

Attorney Terry Gilbert, who represents Ajamu and his brother, thanked prosecutors for dismissing the charges.

OIP attorney Brian Howe investigated and litigated Jackson’s case. Through an exhaustive investigation, he found new witnesses and collaborated with other OIP administrators.

“The investigation has continued pretty much nonstop for literally years leading up to the hearing this week,” he told WCPO’s Evan Millward. “At the hearing he was obviously pretty overwhelmed.

http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/prosecutors-dismiss-1975-murder-charges-against-3