Dwayne Brooks, flanked by attorneys Sarah Gelsomino (left) and Elizabeth Bonham (right), sued Cleveland police on Tuesday over his wrongful conviction in a 1987 murder case.
Tribune News Service
CLEVELAND, Ohio — A man who was exonerated after serving 35 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit sued Cleveland police on Tuesday and said the pain and anger he feels has been “pervasive” in the decades since his arrest and in the 17 months since he has been released.
Dwayne Brooks said he’s haunted by his more than 12,000 days he spent in prison and the thought that he initially faced the death penalty for the 1987 murder of Clinton Arnold.
“I was accused of a heinous crime I didn’t do,” Brooks said. “I was hunted down like an animal. I was put on trial facing the death penalty. And this evidence was there the whole time that I didn’t do it. … If the jury believed one more lie, I might not be here today.”
Brooks’ attorneys, Elizabeth Bonham and Sarah Gelsomino, filed the lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Cleveland, accusing nine former Cleveland police officers or their estates of ignoring evidence that pointed to his innocence and toward other suspects.
Bonham and Gelsomino said several other men have been found wrongfully convicted of murder in Cleveland by the same police officers and supervisors who investigated homicides from the 1970s to the 1990s, including Brooks.
They both blamed a culture of rushing to close cases, along with no accountability for wrongdoing by officers.
“There’s no world in which they didn’t know,” Bonham said. “And what’s worse is there hasn’t been an attempt yet by the city of Cleveland to take accountability.”
Cleveland city spokeswoman Marie Zickefoose declined comment, citing the pending lawsuit.
“We respect the legal process and will refrain from comment until the matter is resolved,” Zickefoose said.
Brooks was 21, a father of three and an aspiring musical artist when he was arrested and accused of shooting Arnold at Luke Easter Park as Arnold played basketball.
The group who shot and killed Arnold and wounded two others at the park had stolen a van shortly before the shooting.
Brooks was in New York at the time of the shooting, the lawsuit said, and no physical evidence ever linked him to the crime.
Police officers who investigated the case never told prosecutors or defense attorneys that witnesses to the two crimes gave mixed statements about Brooks’ involvement, including some witnesses who definitively said Brooks wasn’t involved in either crime.
Officers also didn’t turn over reports that said they initially investigated other suspects, including arresting Michael Creer, who police found with items from the stolen van in his home. Creer was released from custody after telling police Brooks carried out the shooting.
A co-defendant in the case, Kelly Wingo, later pleaded guilty in the case in exchange for testimony against Brooks. Police never disclosed that at the time of the shooting, Wingo was under FBI investigation for international drug trafficking, the lawsuit said.
Later, both Creer and Wingo recanted their statements to police.
Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge William McGinty in 2023 ordered a new trial after attorneys discovered the withheld evidence. Cuyahoga County prosecutors months later declined to re-try the case and McGinty ordered the case permanently closed.
Brooks in May was paid $1.1 million from the state for being wrongfully convicted after filing an action in the Ohio Court of Claims.
He said no amount of money from the lawsuit will feel like justice. Brooks said he missed out on his youth, will never get back his health and missed out on raising his three children.
“There are so many emotions, but the pain is pervasive,” Brooks said. “You can’t take the pain away from being incarcerated 35 years for something you didn’t do.”
