A Cleveland man who spent nearly 35 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder is suing the city of Cleveland and nine former Cleveland police officers involved in his case.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by attorneys for 58-year-old Dwayne Brooks, alleges Cleveland officers suppressed evidence in Brooks’ case leading to his 1988 murder conviction.
“The evidence that they intentionally disregarded in this case of Dwayne's innocence is powerful,” said Brooks’ attorney Sarah Gelsomino. “It's not the kind of evidence that you can just... overlook without being intentional about overlooking that.”
In 1987, at Luke Easter Park on Cleveland’s East Side, a shooter in a stolen van killed Clinton Arnold and injured two bystanders, according to the complaint filed in the Northern District of Ohio.
According to the complaint, there was no physical evidence linking Brooks to the scene of the crime.
Brooks was arrested and charged with the shooting, despite having an alibi for the day of the shooting — he was in New York with family — and despite evidence that other men, not Brooks, were seen getting into and out of the van before and after the shooting. The prosecution ultimately rested on testimony from unreliable witnesses.
Both of the witnesses police relied on were identified as stealing the van by its owner and another witness. One told police he was not involved. One of the witnesses was suspected by police as a drug trafficker, and, according to the complaint, the intended target of the shooting was likely a rival drug dealer at the park that day.
“These and other pieces of exculpatory information were hidden in police possession for decades,” the complaint said.
Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge William McGinty approved Brooks’ motion for a new trial in April 2023. The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office declined to go ahead with the case after losing an appeal to overturn McGinty’s decision.
Brooks has been out of prison for close to 17 months and said there’s no dollar amount that can make up for what he’s lost.
“There’s really no real justice for me because you can't let me be 21 again,” Brooks said. “You can't give me back all the people that I've lost. You can't give me back my youth, my health, but it's a semblance of justice.”
The complaint describes several cases that were eventually overturned, going as far back as 1975, where appeals court judges found that Cleveland police withheld evidence from the defense.
“This is so pervasive, and we see the same police officers, the same homicide detectives, coming up in case after case, that it's hard for me to believe that they were just being lazy or taking the easy way out,” Gelsomino said.
Brooks is entitled to tens of millions of dollars in compensation for the harm done to him, said Gelsomino.
The city of Cleveland declined to comment on the lawsuit.
"Per our policy, the City does not comment on pending litigation," a city spokesperson wrote in an email. "We respect the legal process and will refrain from comment until the matter is resolved."
