Category Archives: Recantations

I blogged last week about the Ohio Innocence Project’s victory in the 6th Circuit court of appeals in the Al Cleveland case. Here’s a great story about the case written by a reporter who got to know Al over the years:

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The phone on my desk rang, and a deep, gruff voice came on the line.

The private investigator with a Chicago accent so thick you could cut it with a knife wanted to talk about the murder conviction of Lorain’s Alfred Cleveland.

I knew Cleveland. I’d hired him to help illustrate a graphic novel that I wrote. Cleveland did the work quickly and expertly — from a cell in the Mansfield prison.

I told Cleveland our relationship was strictly artist and writer, that I would not report his story in the newspaper, even though he professed his innocence. I started to say that to the guy on the phone. He had other ideas.

“Shut up,” he growled.

I did.

“My name is Paul Ciolino,” he said. “Google me. I’ll wait.”

My jaw dropped. I found story after story about how this detective’s work got five men off Illinois death row who were wrongfully convicted, and how he worked with the celebrated “Innocence Project.”

This was someone to listen to. What he said in this 2006 call made me delve into Cleveland’s case and follow leads that Ciolino had uncovered, including an interview with the witness whose testimony put Cleveland behind bars. Testimony the witness said he made up.

It led to other questions about whether Cleveland was even in Lorain the night of the murder.

Last week a federal appeals court, citing the same issues I found, ordered a lower-court judge to reconsider Cleveland’s request for a new trial. The judges suggest Cleveland could be acquitted. The prison artist might soon be a free man.

My first contact with Cleveland, now 43, was in 2002. He sent me copies of his artwork after reading my weekly comic book column in The Plain Dealer. The art was impressive.

Even more impressive was that Cleveland honed his talent in his cell in the Richland Correctional Institution, where he has been serving a life sentence for the murder of a Lorain prostitute in 1991. He and three other men were convicted of the crime in 1996.

Through letters and occasional telephone conversations, I encouraged Cleveland to keep drawing and painting. Over the next few years, he sent copies of other works.

I mailed him a copy of my first comic, “Phantom Jack,” about a newspaper reporter who used invisibility powers to right wrongs. Cleveland soon responded with a cassette tape that had a Phantom Jack theme song. In the accompanying note, he said he had access to a full music studio and recorded the song by layering music and vocals.

The cassette stunned me. It was so professional that I thought perhaps he had taken an existing song and added a vocal track.

Cleveland called and asked how I liked the tape. I said it was amazing and asked if it was original or made by sampling other artist’s compositions.

He seemed insulted.

“I did that all myself,” he said.

It was the last time I underestimated his talent.

After I got to know him, the idea that he was a convicted killer seemed less and less real.

By 2005, I was assembling artists to illustrate a graphic novel I was writing for Image Comics called “Tales of the Starlight Drive-In.”

It’s a series of connected stories set in a drive-in theater that had an original story Continue reading →