Kwame Ajamu grabs his brother, Wiley Bridgeman, moments after Bridgeman was released from prison in November 2014. The state has agreed to pay the brothers more than $4 million for being wrongfully incarcerated.

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A federal judge on Friday dismissed a pair of lawsuits filed by three men against the city of Cleveland for the decades they lost in prison for a murder in the 1970s that they did not commit.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Boyko, in ruling for the city, wrote that Ricky Jackson, Wiley Bridgeman and Kwame Ajamu did not prove that the police department had policies in the 1970s that prevented defense attorneys from obtaining exculpatory evidence.

Boyko also wrote that the trio cannot show the detectives on the case, whom the trio said fabricated police reports and coerced a 12-year-old into lying on the witness stand, were inadequately trained.

"No matter how sympathetic one may be to Plaintiff's plight, the Court is still under an obligation to apply the law to the evidence Plaintiff submits," Boyko wrote. "Neither time nor death abrogates Plaintiff's obligation to support his claims."

(You can read the full opinion here or at the bottom of this story.)

A jury in August 1975 found Jackson, Bridgeman and his brother Ajamu, then known by Ronnie Bridgeman, guilty of murdering Harold Franks outside a convenience store on the city's East Side. They were also convicted of trying to kill store owner Anna Robinson.

A judge sentenced them to death, though that was later reduced to life sentences.

Nearly 40 years later, a witness named Eddie Vernon recanted his testimony and county judges cleared them of the charges. Vernon, who was 12 years old at the time of the killing, testified in 2014 that detectives pressured him to lie on the witness stand and that police manipulated him.

Bridgeman, 62, and Jackson, 60, were released in November 2014. Ajamu, 59, has been out of prison on parole since 2003. They were released with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project. Jackson is the longest-serving person in U.S. history to be cleared for a crime he did not commit.

All three filed suit in 2015. The detectives on the case, including lead investigators Eugne Terpay and James Farmer, are now either dead or infirmed, and Boyko has dismissed all the officers involved since the case was filed.

Terry Gilbert, an attorney representing Bridgeman and Ajamu said he was disappointed in Boyko's decision. He said it was clear through the evidence and statements from officers who worked there at the time that the culture and department allowed for officers to withhold evidence and manipulate witnesses.

He contrasted the evidence, which he said was "voluminous" to the judge's decision to dismiss the city, which was 14 pages long.

"But we are not deterred by this and we will continue fighting for these guys who suffered horrific injustice," Gilbert said, indicating he would appeal Boyko's opinion.

City spokesman Dan Williams said he did not have a comment. An attorney representing Jackson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The state of Ohio paid millions of dollars to Jackson, Bridgeman and Ajamu for the time they spent in prison following their release.

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