For Derrick Jamison, who spent two decades on Ohio’s death row, a Hamilton County courtroom delivered a long-awaited turning point on Thursday. A judge formally declared that Jamison was wrongfully imprisoned, clearing the way for him to seek compensation from the state for the years he lived under a death sentence.
Common Pleas Judge Christopher McDowell issued the ruling after a two-day bench trial, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. Under Ohio law, McDowell’s decision formally recognizes Jamison as a wrongfully imprisoned individual and makes him eligible to pursue a monetary claim in the Ohio Court of Claims.
Jamison was convicted in 1985 of killing a bartender during a robbery and was sentenced to death. In 2000, a federal judge granted him habeas relief after finding that prosecutors had suppressed exculpatory evidence, a ruling later affirmed by the Sixth Circuit in an opinion archived on Justia. Prosecutors ultimately dismissed the case in 2005, according to the National Registry of Exonerations…