Jurors have awarded $45 million to an Ohio man who was wrongfully incarcerated for the kidnap and rape of three women in the 1980s.
Roger "Dean" Gillispie, now 57, was found guilty in 1991 for assaulting 22-year-old twin sisters as well as a third woman in Miami and Harris townships.
On Monday, a Montgomery Count jury found that a Miami Township detective suppressed evidence that led to Gillispie's guilty verdict, and awarded him what was ultimately the largest settlement in Ohio's history.
"The verdict just proved my point from day one, that I'm innocent," Gillispie said on Monday outside a Dayton courthouse after he was awarded the record-breaking amount, the Daily Mail reports.
In 2008, Gillispie requested a new trial and three years later, his convictions were thrown out.
His legal team told the jury that new evidence strongly suggested that another suspect was responsible for the crimes he'd been accused of. They also accused police of suppressing evidence. Throughout his 20 years behind bars, Gillispie maintained his innocence.
After Gillispie was awarded the $45 million settlement, he made a vow to change "the system" responsible for wrongfully convicting him.
"I'm just one of 3,199 people that this happened to in the United States of America and those people have served over 28,000 years in prison for crimes we did not commit," Gillispie said. "And this has to stop. This system has to be fixed … to keep this from happening."
Speaking before a judge in 2021 after it was officially declared he'd been wrongfully incarcerated, he shared his gratitude to those who had rallied around him over the years.
"I like to thank my family and friends, my advisors, the Ohio Innocence Project and the many others for their belief in me and the dedication to seek the truth over the last 31 years," Gillispie said at the time.
Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Susan Solle shared her empathy, stating that she couldn't "even imagine" what the last three decades had been like for him.
"Hopefully today will take you into the next and final chapter of this nightmare that has been your life for the past 30 years and the next part will be a lot smoother and a lot quicker," the judge said.
Gillispie went on to say that there was not enough money in the world to compensate the time he had lost while in prison.
"There's not enough, if they said $5 billion, nobody's taking $5 billion for 31 years but they don't know if they are going to get out or not," he said. "Nobody's taking that. The money is irrelevant. It's about showing that we were right. The money is just to help me survive and help my family — my family is buried in debt from this..."
"The money doesn't fix me, it doesn't fix the lost time. It doesn't fix the mental anguish and the PTSD that I got from this. It doesn't do a thing for it."
Evidence in the re-trial showed that a police officer had set up an unfair lineup and falsely stated that a witness had identified Gillispie.
