An innocent man who spent 39 years in prison asked Hillary Clinton a pointed question about the death penalty at CNN's Town Hall in Ohio on Sunday night.
The man, Ricky Jackson, was convicted along with his friends, Ronnie and Wiley Bridgeman, of murdering Harold Franks in Cleveland, Ohio in 1975.
Jackson directly confronted Clinton about her stance on capital punishment. Clinton has historically been in favor of the death penalty with some limitations.
"I would like to know how can you still take your stance on the death penalty, in light of what you know right now?" Jackson asked.
Clinton called his inquiry "a profoundly difficult question."
Jackson entered prison as an 18-year-old and was released in 2014 at age 57. He was initially sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1977, just two months shy of his execution date. He was saved by a mistake the court made filling out his paperwork, according to CNN.
Jackson holds the tragic distinction of spending the longest time ever incarcerated on a wrongful conviction, according to The Cleveland Plain Dealer. He was shifted around from prison to prison, with his security level reduced each time, reports The Christian Science Monitor.
The state's key witness in the case, Eddie Vernon, then a 12-year-old boy, told the court he saw Jackson and the Bridgeman brothers attack Franks outside a Cut-Rate store, according to a 2011 investigation by the Cleveland Scene magazine. Vernon also claimed Jackson fired the fatal shots and left Franks dying on the street.
No physical evidence, however, linked either Jackson or the Bridgeman brothers to the crime, reported the Scene.
Spurred by the Scene's investigation, the Ohio Innocence Project took on Jackson's case. Vernon eventually recanted his testimony and admitted he was manipulated by the detectives and state prosecutors.
"All the information was fed to me," Vernon told the court, per the Cleveland Plain Dealer. "Everything was a lie, they were all lies."
The judge who dismissed Jackson's case told him directly that, "life is filled with small victories, and this is a big one," according to CBS News.