On Monday, a state board approved a $1.1 million settlement for a New York man unfairly imprisoned for over 35 years for a 1987 Cleveland murder.
A Cuyahoga County judge released Dwayne Brooks, 58, from prison last year after ruling that police and prosecutors withheld police reports and witness statements from Brooks’ attorneys, supporting their client’s claim that he was not involved in the ambush of 35-year-old Clinton Arnold at Luke Easter Park in August 1987.
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At the time, Brooks, a resident of Hempstead, New York, claimed he was not even in Ohio when Arnold’s death occurred. However, the evidence of two co-defendants, who collaborated with prosecutors to identify Brooks as Arnold’s killer in exchange for pleading guilty to lesser crimes, primarily led to Brooks’ conviction and life sentence in prison.
On Monday, the Ohio Controlling Board approved a $1,103,475.92 preliminary judgment payment to Brooks without discussion or debate. State law, which currently pays $64,186.92 to wrongfully imprisoned people for each year of their incarceration, owes Brooks roughly half of that amount.
The Ohio Court of Claims granted a preliminary judgment amount late last month, approximately $88 for each of the 12,519 illegal days Brooks spent in prison. The money will come from the state’s general revenue fund.
Brooks could receive reimbursement for his attorneys’ fees and the money he would have earned if he hadn’t been in prison. A judge or a legal settlement will establish the exact amount of money he is to receive.
Just three weeks ago, board members approved a $131,000 settlement for Aaron Culbertson, a Canton resident unfairly imprisoned for more than four years for a 2018 robbery in which new evidence showed he was not involved.
Controlling Board members have also approved many other wrongful-imprisonment payouts in the last 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
