Wrongfully convicted man says police withheld evidence

CLEVELAND (AP) — A man who spent nearly 15 years in prison for a murder he did not commit said Cleveland police detectives and their supervisors withheld evidence from prosecutors that would have proven his innocence at trial, his attorneys wrote in a federal lawsuit.

Ru-El Sailor, 40, was convicted in 2003 of aggravated murder and other charges in the shooting death of a man during an argument over the failure to pay the full $20 cost for a PCP-laced marijuana cigarette.

Cordell Hubbard was arrested shortly after the slaying of Omar Clark in 2002 and was convicted the following year on complicity to commit aggravated murder, murder and other charges.

The lawsuit, first reported on by cleveland.com, was filed late last week.

Sailor maintained his innocence and took the stand in his own defense when key alibi witnesses were intimidated by a Cleveland police detective and failed to testify on his behalf, according to the lawsuit.

In 2017, Sailor asked the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit to reopen his case. An investigator found evidence that Sailor was not involved in Clark’s slaying, leading to his exoneration in 2018.

A Cleveland spokeswoman declined to comment about the lawsuit.