Two Former Death Row Inmates Exonerated and Freed in Ohio

     After spending a quarter century in prison, including time on Ohio's death row, Timothy Howard and Gary Lemar James have been freed from prison and all charges against the men will be dropped. The men, who have maintained their innocence since their arrest in 1976, were freed, according to Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien, "in the interest  of justice."

 O'Brien stated, "The lesson to be learned is what I said in the letter I sent a year and a half ago. We don't want anybody in prison serving time for something they didn't do." The seven-year effort to exonerate Howard and James was led by their attorneys in conjunction with Centurion Ministries, a non-profit organization that has assisted in freeing more than 30 wrongfully convicted prisoners since 1983.

  Attorneys for Howard and James presented prosecutors with new evidence in the cases, including fingerprints, witness statements, and polygraph results that were not available during the original trial that resulted in the pair being sentenced to death. O'Brien acknowledged that  dismissing the charges means that the city of Columbus has a 26-year-old unsolved bank robbery and murder. - Columbus Dispatch