Innocent Man Freed After 38 Years

Sixty-year-old Wiley Bridgeman was released from prison Friday after being locked up for 38 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Bridgeman was accused of killing a money-order collector in 1975 and convicted of aggravated murder and robbery based on the word of a 12-year-old boy. The hearing for Bridgeman’s release lasted less than three minutes, when a judge tossed the case against him and released him. Bridgeman’s lifelong friend, Ricky Jackson, was released hours earlier after serving 39 years for the same crime. As Bridgeman walked out of Ohio’s Cuyahoga County Justice Center, he told reporters what words helped him survive for so long in prison: “You don’t give up.”