Ohio to pay $1.1M to man wrongfully imprisoned 35 years for 1987 killing
COLUMBUS — A state board on Monday approved a $1.1 million payment to a New York man who wrongfully spent more than 35 years in prison for a 1987 Cleveland murder.
Dwayne Brooks, 58, was released from prison last year after a Cuyahoga County judge held that police and prosecutors withheld police reports and witness statements from Brooks’ attorneys supporting their client’s contention that he wasn’t involved with the ambush killing of 35-year-old Clinton Arnold at Luke Easter Park in August 1987.
Brooks, a Hempstead, N.Y., resident at the time, claimed he wasn’t even in Ohio when Arnold was killed. But Brooks was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, largely on the testimony of two co-defendants who agreed with prosecutors to identify Brooks as Arnold’s killer in exchange for pleading guilty to lesser charges.
The Ohio Controlling Board on Monday, without comment or debate, approved a preliminary judgment payment of $1,103,475.92 to Brooks. That’s about half of the money he is owed under state law, which currently pays $64,186.92 to wrongfully
imprisoned people for each year they were incarcerated.
The preliminary judgment amount, which the Ohio Court of Claims approved late last month, equates to about $88 for each of the 12,519 days Brooks was wrongfully behind bars. The money will come out of the state’s general-revenue fund.
In addition to those damages, Brooks could also be compensated for attorneys’ fees and for loss of wages he would have otherwise earned if he wasn’t in prison.
The exact amount of money he will end up being paid will be determined by a judge or a legal settlement.
Monday’s Controlling Board vote comes just three weeks after board members signed off on a $131,000 payment to Aaron Culbertson of Canton, who wrongfully spent more than four years behind bars for a 2018 robbery that new information showed he wasn’t involved in.
Controlling Board members have also approved several other wrongful-imprisonment payments in the
past three years, including:
$3 million in December to the estate of Isaiah Andrews of Cuyahoga County, who spent more than 45 years in prison for the murder of his wife
$1 million in 2021 to ex-death Row inmate Joe D’ambrosio of North Royalton, who, after more than two decades behind bars, was released in 2010 because of prosecutorial misconduct
$1.8 million in 2021 to Anthony Lemons of Cleveland, who was acquitted of murder charges in 2014 after 18 years in prison