Ricky Jackson will walk free on Friday after spending 39 years of his life in prison for a murder he didn't commit.

Jackson, 57, is the longest-held U.S. prisoner to be exonerated, Reuters reported.

A Cleveland judge dropped all charges against Jackson on Nov. 17 and he will be released on Friday, Nov. 20.

Jackson and two other men were convicted for the 1975 death of a money-order collector at a Cleveland grocery store after 12-year-old Eddie Vernon testified that he witnessed the killing. No other evidence linked the men to crime, but they were sentenced to death. Jackson's death sentence was later vacated and the death penalty was declared unconstitutional in Ohio in 1978.

On Tuesday, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty told Judge Richard McMonagle that the case against Jackson had fallen apart after Vernon recanted his testimony this week, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported.

Vernon, now 53, told the prosecutor that he had never witnessed the crime as a child.

"Everything was a lie," he said. "They were all lies."

Prosecutors dismissed the case, saying the state "concedes the obvious."