Dwayne Brooks stood outside a Cleveland courthouse, raising a fist to the sky. After 35 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, the 58-year-old breathed free air, his eyes wet with relief and rage. “It hurt,” he said, clutching police reports that proved his innocence from the start.
“They knew I didn’t do it.”
This May, Ohio approved a $2.6 million settlement for Brooks, bringing his total compensation to $3.7 million—a bittersweet acknowledgment of a life stolen.
In 1987, a shooting at Luke Easter Park in Cleveland’s Kinsman neighborhood left Clinton Arnold dead and two others wounded. Brooks, then 21, was charged with aggravated murder. He insisted he was in New York with family, but his alibi was buried. His 1988 conviction hinged on testimony from two co-defendants, Michael Creer and Kelly Wingo, who cut deals for lesser charges. No physical evidence tied Brooks to the scene, and key police reports—pointing to other suspects and undermining Wingo’s credibility—were withheld, violating legal mandates. Brooks faced the death penalty, then life in prison, losing 12,519 days to a system that failed him.
The truth surfaced in 2020 when a private investigator, hired by Brooks’s family, uncovered hidden police reports and witness statements through a public records request. These documents, never shared with Brooks’s defense, showed Creer with items from the crime’s stolen van and Wingo under FBI scrutiny for drug trafficking. In April 2023, Cuyahoga County Judge William McGinty overturned the conviction, citing the suppressed evidence’s potential to alter the trial’s outcome. By September, prosecutors dismissed all charges, freeing Brooks after a five-month delay on house arrest that his attorneys called unnecessary.
The state’s response came in stages: $1.1 million in 2024, followed by the $2.6 million settlement on May 5, 2025. The $3.7 million total—about $296 per day of wrongful imprisonment—offers financial stability but no true repair. If Brooks wins his federal civil rights lawsuit against Cleveland and nine former officers, alleging intentional misconduct, he may need to repay the state.
“No amount of money can bring back my youth,”
Brooks said, his voice heavy with loss.
“They don’t care they took my life, but maybe they’ll care about some money they have to spend.”
Prison was a crucible. Brooks described it as “being hunted like an animal,” a daily fight to survive. He missed raising his three children, including a son born just after his sentencing. His dreams of boxing and rapping faded behind bars, though he wrote songs to keep his spirit alive. Now in New York, Brooks is reconnecting with family and advocating for justice reform, determined to help others wrongfully convicted.
“The nightmare’s still there,”
he admitted,
“but I have to live for the future.”
Brooks’s case isn’t isolated. Cleveland’s history of wrongful convictions—cases like Isaiah Andrews, Michael Sutton, and Kenny Phillips—points to systemic flaws. From the 1970s, the city’s homicide unit repeatedly suppressed evidence, targeting innocent people to close cases. Attorneys Sarah Gelsomino and Elizabeth Bonham, representing Brooks, called it a “culture of rushing” without accountability. Ohio Representative Bride Rose Sweeney, part of the board approving Brooks’s settlement, urged reforms to prevent such injustices. she said.
“No amount of money can bring back the time these men lost,”
