A man who was wrongfully convicted and imprisoned for 20 years will receive a $45 million settlement. Roger “Dean” Gillispie was convicted of raping and kidnapping 22-year-old twin sisters and a 28-year-old woman in 1991 and sentenced to 56 years in prison. However, he always maintained his innocence.
- Gillispie was finally released in 2011. After spending two decades in prison, Roger Gillispie was released and given back his freedom after a federal district order court granted him a writ of habeas corpus. However, it would be another 10 years before he was truly exonerated.
- Cops also withheld key information before and during Gillispie’s trial. Per the court order: “The jury never heard testimony about the original investigating officers, Dets. [Steven] Fritz and [Gary] Bailey, eliminating Mr. Gillispie as a suspect nor the reasons why they eliminated him. While Dets. Fritz’s and Bailey’s opinions as to why Mr. Gillispie was not a good suspect certainly do not directly go to the issue of Mr. Gillispie’s guilt or innocence, they clearly go to the quality of the investigation which took place subsequent to Dets. Fritz’s and Bailey’s investigation. The withheld information is material which would have allowed Mr. Gillispie’s counsel to impeach Det. Moore with respect to his investigation of the crimes for which Mr. Gillispie was tried and convicted.” The numerous Brady violations all but completely exonerated Gillispie.
- He was officially declared innocent in 2021. The now-57-year-old always claimed that former Miami Township Police Department detective Scott Moore was guilty of suppressing evidence and unduly influencing eyewitnesses “through a highly improper and contaminated identification process.” In other words, Moore was a crooked cop who framed Gillispie to make himself look good for supposedly closing a case and getting a conviction.
- After Gillispie was proclaimed innocent in Montgomery County in December 2021, he filed a lawsuit. The trial against the MTPD and Moore ended with Roger Gillispie receiving $45 million – the largest in Ohio state history for police misconduct, Gillispie’s lawyers say.
- Gillispie himself spoke outside the Walter H. Rice Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Dayton on Monday, per the Journal-News. “The verdict just proved my point from day one, that I’m innocent,” he said. “I was innocent. I’m innocent, always have been innocent, and we just proved it again one more time. That’s the third time we have proved that I am innocent.”
