Repentance and forgiveness forty years after a lie
(The Christian Science Monitor) A lie landed Ricky Jackson, 58, on death row at age 18. For the past 39 years, the particulars of his life have been dictated by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, making him the longest-serving wrongfully convicted person in American history.
Now back in East Cleveland, he sat minutes away from the street corner that 40 years ago was home to a store run by Robert and Anna Robinson. The store sold money orders, and every week an agent would come to collect the payments and settle the accounts.
On May 19, 1975, that agent was Harold Franks. He arrived at the store with a leather valise containing blank money order notebooks and $429 in cash. After Franks finished his business and stepped outside, a man hit him on the head with a pipe, trying to tear the bag from his hands. Another man pressed a .38-caliber revolver into Franks’s torso and fired. The gunman shot Anna Robinson also. She lived, but Franks died.
