CLEVELAND — Editor's Note: The above video featuring Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley is from a previously published, unrelated story
A former death row inmate who was wrongly imprisoned for two decades will receive a $1 million payment from the state of Ohio.
The Ohio Controlling Board voted unanimously Monday to make the award to Joe D’Ambrosio. The money will come from the state’s . It's part of a 2019 change in the law that allows people freed from prison because of police or prosecutorial misconduct to be eligible for compensation for serving prison time.
The board’s decision comes about two months after Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley dropped an appeal opposing a judge’s ruling that D’Ambrosio was wrongly imprisoned but urged state officials not to compensate him, saying he believes witness testimony during the trial showed that D’Ambrosio is guilty.
“Should people who are not innocent get money?” O’Malley asked in June, saying that Klann’s father is outraged by the notion that the man accused of killing his son could receive a payout.
D’Ambrosio was released without conditions in 2010 after a judge who determined that prosecutors withheld evidence that could have exonerated D’Ambrosio at his 1989 trial. He had been accused of kidnapping and killing 19-year-old Anthony Klann, who was found dead in a Cleveland park in 1988.
County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Russo ruled in 2012 that D’Ambrosio was wrongfully convicted but the Ohio Supreme Court reversed the judge’s decision two years later based on precedent that said the prosecutorial misconduct had to have happened after the person was sentenced instead of during the trial stages.
More Headlines: