CLEVELAND — After nearly 35 years of maintaining his innocence, the man convicted of the 1987 murder at Cleveland’s Luke Easter Park will get another chance to convince a jury he’s not a killer.
Cuyahoga County Judge William McGinty granted Dwayne Brooks a new trial after finding prosecutors withheld information from defense attorneys that denied Brooks a fair trial.
Brooks insisted he wasn’t even in Cleveland at the time of the murder. In an interview from prison last November, Brooks said he was in New York on Aug. 17, 1987.
That’s when investigators claimed Brooks opened fire on a group of men at the park, killing Clinton Arnold and wounding two others.
A jury convicted Brooks of aggravated murder and other charges. He was sentenced to 25 years-to-life in prison.
But recently-discovered police reports raised questions about the prosecution’s case.
The reports contained information that a witness put two other men in the van used in the deadly shooting and revealed that a former high school friend who testified that Brooks was the triggerman was himself under FBI investigation.
The attorney who represented Brooks at trial testified during a November court hearing that he never saw the reports, and the lead prosecutor in the case testified that at the time of the 1988 trial, it was the prosecutor’s policy not to share copies of those reports with defense lawyers.
In his ruling, McGinty found while the state did not disclose the information to defense attorneys, the judge did not find that prosecutors acted in bad faith.
“Fair play is fair play,” said attorney David Singleton who now represents Brooks. “If you know something that could help the other side if you are trying to put somebody away potentially for the rest of their lives, you’ve got to turn that over.”
Singleton said Brooks is ecstatic with the judge’s decision to grant him a new trial.
In a statement Thursday a spokesperson for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley said the state is still reviewing the judge’s decision and declined to comment further.
While he waits to learn whether prosecutors will re-try Brooks for the murder, Singleton said his primary goal is to get the now 57-year-old released and reunited with his family after nearly 35 years behind bars.
It’s something Brooks said he thinks about all the time.
“I want to hug my mother,” said Brooks. “I want to hug my mother and hold her. Pick her up and just hold her in my arms. If she wants to cry, she can cry. If I want to cry, I can cry. That’s what I want to do first.”
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