Derrick Jamison
In February 2005, Ohio Common Pleas Judge Richard Niehaus dismissed all charges against Derrick Jamison for the death of a Cincinnati bartender after prosecutors elected not to retry him in the case. The prosecution had withheld critical eyewitness statements and other evidence from the defense resulting in the overturning of Derrick’s conviction in 2002. Derrick was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 based in part on the testimony of Charles Howell, a co-defendant who had his own sentence reduced in exchange for his testimony against Derrick.
The prosecution withheld statements that contradicted Howell’s testimony and would have undermined the prosecution’s theory of how the victim died and would have pointed to other possible suspects for the murder. Two federal courts ruled that the prosecution’s actions denied Derrick a fair trial.
Derrick himself is now fully aware of the inequality of the criminal justice system. “There is a double standard when it comes to justice in our judicial system, especially with wrongful conviction,” he says. “If you are a minority, or a low-income citizen, the pursuit of justice can be an elusive one. But if you are rich it happens overnight.”
One of the withheld statements involved James Suggs, an eyewitness to the robbery. Suggs testified at trial that he had been unable to make a positive identification when the police showed him a photo array of suspects. In fact, police records show that Suggs identified two suspects, neither of whom was Derrick Jamison. Additional withheld evidence consisted of a series of discrepancies between Derrick’s physical characteristics and the descriptions of the perpetrators given to police investigators by eyewitnesses.
Although his bitterness toward the system is subsiding, Derrick still expresses anger about the way in which the 17 years he spent on death row impacted his life and the lives of his family members. At the time of his sentencing, he was incredibly distraught about the impact of his unjust imprisonment. “I was very angry, furious . . . all the emotions that stir up anguish. It made me feel it was over for me. Not only did that sentence affect me, but it was the demise of my mother and father.”
Derrick currently lives in Cincinnati, where he expresses daily gratitude
for his release. “In the 21 years I experienced ‘dead man walking’ I never
had anything to smile about,” he says, “but on the day of my release, I felt
the smile come from within my heart. The sun shined down on me that day.”