CLEVELAND.COM: After 39 years in prison, Bridgeman, 60, went before Common Pleas Judge David Matia and heard the words he could only imagine behind bars: You’re a free man…
He left the Justice Center exonerated of a crime he didn’t commit: the slaying of a money-order collector. As he left, he told reporters the words that helped him survive for nearly four decades in prison: “You don’t give up.”
This week, Eddie Vernon, who helped police build a botched case against Jackson, Bridgeman and Bridgeman’s brother, Ronnie, recanted. Vernon told authorities that he never saw what happened when Harold Franks was attacked in 1975 outside an East Side convenience store… (more)
