CLEVELAND — David Ayers says he feared for his life during the nearly 12 years he spent in a prison for a murder that evidence showed he did not commit.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit voided Mr. Ayers’s conviction in 2010, and he was freed nearly a year later. A federal jury in 2013 awarded him $13.2 million, a verdict upheld by the appeals court.
But Mr. Ayers has not received a dime, and it is unclear if he will.
The City of Cleveland says that it owes him nothing and that the judgment was against the two homicide detectives who helped convict him, not the city. It further argues that the judgment was erased in a bankruptcy filed by one of the detectives.
It appears Cleveland is planning a similar strategy over a $5.5 million verdict returned in September against a police officer who fatally shot Kenny Smith outside a nightclub in 2012. That verdict has been appealed, but the city in November hired a bankruptcy lawyer for the officer.
Lawyers for Mr. Ayers’s and Mr. Smith’s families say they are outraged by the practice. They say Ohio law requires municipalities to pay judgments for employees sued for acts committed during their employment.
Ruth Brown, one of Mr. Ayers’s Chicago-based lawyers, calls the strategy unprecedented and a “blatant dodge.”
“Nobody’s ever heard of anything like this,” Ms. Brown said.
Terry Gilbert, a lawyer for Mr. Smith’s family, said the city was required to indemnify employees who have judgments filed against them.
“They’re desperate to find a way not to pay these verdicts and are engaging in legal shenanigans,” Mr. Gilbert said.
Cleveland said it “does not have a policy of avoiding the payment of its legal obligations, including judgments.” It said the judgments were against individual police officers, not the city. It said in a statement Friday that it had no obligation to pay Mr. Ayers after being dismissed from his lawsuit.
While Cleveland has been hailed as a comeback city, it is also under pressure to fix a troubled police department that has cost the city millions of dollars in judgments and settlements of lawsuits for abusive behavior by officers. Cleveland paid a total of $3 million in 2014 to the families of two unarmed people killed in a 137-shot barrage of police gunfire.
A jury convicted Mr. Ayers of aggravated murder in December 2000 in the killing of a woman at an apartment complex for the elderly where he worked as a security guard. The conviction was based primarily on the testimony of the detectives and a jailhouse informant who said Mr. Ayers had confessed.
Mr. Ayers refused to accept two plea deals offered by prosecutors. Instead, he went to trial, and he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was exonerated after it was learned that hairs found on the victim’s body did not belong to him, that detectives had fed information to the jailhouse informant and that the authorities had failed to check surveillance camera footage that would have corroborated his story about his whereabouts.
Mr. Ayers, 58, said he had feared for his life every day in prison.
“They put me away and took away 11 years of life for something I’m completely innocent of,” he said. “I think they should stop and pay me my money.”
Mr. Smith was shot once in the head by an off-duty police officer, Roger Jones. The officer told investigators that he had shot Mr. Smith when he reached for a handgun in a car. He said Mr. Smith had gotten out of the car after he was shot and had taken several steps before collapsing.
A witness testified during a federal civil trial that Mr. Smith had been outside the car and lowering himself to the ground when Officer Jones shot him. A medical examiner testified that Mr. Smith had been immediately incapacitated and could not have taken any steps.
The Cuyahoga County prosecutor, Tim McGinty, called Officer Jones a hero after a grand jury cleared him of charges. After the $5.5 million jury verdict, Mr. McGinty said his office would re-examine the shooting.
wonder if you can levy something like a” notice of furnishing ”
to where they cant spend a F-ken dime til your paid , that ought to get some attention?