After serving 11 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, David Ayers was freed on September 12, 2011. The work to secure Ayers’ freedom was a joint effort of the Cuyahoga County Public Defender and the Ohio Innocence Project.  An Ohio judge announced that the prosecutor was dismissing the charges against Ayers and welcomed Ayers back to the community.
 
The Crime
Dorothy Brown, an elderly woman living in a Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority (“CMHA”) building was found in her apartment, beaten to death, on December 17, 1999. Despite her advanced age, she had several defensive wounds indicating that she fought back against her attacker. She was discovered nude from the waist down and pubic hairs were recovered from her mouth, dentures, and clothing. Her emptied handbag was found on the recliner in her apartment.
 
The Investigation and Arrest
David Ayers worked for CMHA as a security guard in Brown’s apartment building. Sarah Harris, a fellow resident and friend of the victim, informed Ayers that she found Brown dead in her apartment.  By the time police arrived, Ayers was in tears and so upset that he was shaking.  This led police to question him numerous times.  Ayers and Harris both stated that they had helped Brown up after she had fallen in her apartment earlier that day.  While interrogating Ayers, police repeatedly accused him of lying because they mistakenly thought surveillance footage from the CMHA building did not show Ayers and Harris going to assist Brown. Even after three months of investigation, the police had still failed to watch the entire video tape. Ayers was arrested on March 14, 2000, despite the insufficient evidence against him.
 
The Trial
At trial, the fully decoded video showed Ayers and Harris at approximately the same time they reported assisting Brown.
 
Although the victim was discovered naked from the waist down with pubic hairs in her mouth, rape was never charged.  Instead, the State argued that the pubic hairs were present because the victim’s apartment was messy. Prosecutors conceded that the pubic hairs collected did not match Brown or Ayers.
 
Three months after the homicide, Kenneth Smith claimed that Ayers called him and told him that a resident had died before the police were notified of the homicide.  However, at trial, Smith recanted his statement and testified that the two lead detectives pressured him. Phone records revealed that Smith had actually called Ayers, and the police incorrectly read the records backwards.
 
It is unknown whether the State was aware of Smith’s coming recantation. However, three days after the trial started, a jailhouse informant contacted the lead detectives stating that Ayers had confessed.  The detectives told the jailhouse informant that the prosecutor would be contacting him and sent him back to the jail cell that he shared with Ayers.  However, the detectives’ notes make clear that they found many details missing from this purported confession.  Shortly after meeting detectives, the jailhouse informant “got” the details the detectives felt were missing.  The prosecutor dismissed all charges pending against the jailhouse informant in exchange for his testimony.
 
Although initially deadlocked, the jury rendered a guilty verdict on December 11, 2000. Ayers was convicted of aggravated murder, aggravated burglary, and aggravated robbery.  
 
Post-Conviction and DNA Testing 
The Ohio Innocence Project filed a motion for DNA testing on February 27, 2008, but prosecutors repeatedly opposed the testing. In the middle of a renewed battle over DNA testing in the trial court, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Ayers’ conviction and remanded the case back to state court for a new trial. This was the result of almost 11 years of litigation by the Cuyahoga County Public Defender.

The Sixth Circuit found that the jailhouse informant’s story was, “both inconsistent and unreliable,” and evidence suggested that, at a minimum, police shared information with the jailhouse informant. The Sixth Circuit also found that because the jailhouse informant and the State were working together, the information that the jailhouse informant “got” after being returned to the jail with Ayers, violated Ayers’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.
 
After Ayers was awarded a new trial, the newly assigned prosecutor sent all of the evidence from the crime scene – including the pubic hairs, the rape kit, and the bloody towel – to the county crime lab.  When DNA testing excluded Ayers, the prosecutor elected to dismiss the charges against him.  The case was dismissed without prejudice on September 12, 2011 and Ayers walked out of jail a free man.