Nearly 40 years after being convicted for a 1975 Cleveland slaying, Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman left the county jail as free men.

A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge dismissed the cases against the two men Friday after the key witness against Jackson, Bridgeman and his brother Ronnie Bridgeman at trial, a 13-year-old boy, recanted last year and said Cleveland police detectives coerced him into testifying that the three killed businessman Harry Franks the afternoon of May 19, 1975.

Cuyahoga County prosecutors on Thursday filed the motion to dismiss all charges against the three men, who were sentenced to death at the time of the conviction. Ronnie Bridgeman, 57, who is now known as Kwame Ajamu, was released from prison in January 2003. He attended the hearings of both men Friday.

When he dismissed Jackson’s case, Judge Richard McMonagle said, “Life is filled with small victories, and this is a big one.”

“The English language doesn’t even fit what I’m feeling,” Jackson, 57, said as he exited the building Friday. “I’m on an emotional high.”

Bridgeman, 60, said he never lost hope that he would be freed for good.

“You keep struggling, you keep trying,” he said.

Bridgeman embraced his brother Ajamu as he walked out of the courthouse. He seemed overwhelmed by the whirlwind of the past few days, saying he wasn’t sure what the future holds, outside of a celebratory fish dinner.

“Stick with me. You’ll be all right,” Ajamu said. “I ain’t never going to let you go.”

Jackson and his lawyers planned to celebrate Friday at a hotel. Asked where he was going to live, Jackson replied: “It’s ironic. For 39 years, I’ve had a place to stay. Now, you know, that’s precarious.”

Ajamu said in an interview Thursday that the prospect of the three being together again is “mind boggling.” Ajamu spent his 18th birthday on death row and was in prison when his mother, a brother and a sister died.

“The idea that my brother – both of those guys are my brothers – are getting out? I don’t even care about me,” Ajamu said.

The Bridgemans’ death sentences were commuted to life in prison after the US supreme court outlawed capital punishment in 1978. Jackson’s sentence was commuted in 1977 on a technicality – a mistake in jury instructions.

The three-year process that led to their exonerations began with a story published in Scene Magazine in 2011 that detailed flaws in the case, including Eddie Vernon’s questionable testimony. Vernon, now 52, did not recant until a minister visited him at a hospital in 2013. Vernon broke down during a court hearing for Jackson on Tuesday as he described the threats by detectives and the burden of guilt he had carried for so long.

Jackson said he holds no animosity toward Vernon.

“It took a lot of courage to do what he did,” he said. “He’s been carrying a burden around for 39 years, like we have. But in the end, he came through, and I’m grateful for that.”

The Ohio Innocence Project took up Jackson’s cause after the Scene article even though there was no DNA evidence, the hallmark of Innocence Project cases. A Cleveland attorney represented Bridgeman and Ajamu.

Joe Frolik, a spokesman for county prosecutor Tim McGinty, declined to comment on Thursday except to reiterate a statement McGinty made Tuesday: “The state concedes the obvious.”