COLUMBUS, Ohio—A state board on Monday approved a $1 million payment from the state to ex-Death Row inmate Joe D’Ambrosio, who was wrongfully imprisoned for more than two decades due to prosecutorial misconduct.
The unanimous decision by the Ohio Controlling Board marks the final hurdle in D’Ambrosio’s years-long effort to get state compensation for his time behind bars.
D’Ambrosio, a North Royalton resident, was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of Anthony Klann, whose body was found floating in Doan Brook in Cleveland’s Rockefeller Park. He was released in 2010 after a judge found that the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office withheld 10 pieces of evidence at his trial that might have led to a not-guilty verdict.
Since then, D’Ambrosio has cleared a number of legal hurdles to seek money from the state for his time behind bars. The Ohio Court of Claims approved the $1 million settlement deal earlier this summer.
The $1 million will come out of the Court of Claims’ wrongful imprisonment fund, according to the court’s written request to the Controlling Board for approval of the payment.
D’Ambrosio’s attorney, Terry Gilbert, said Monday that the payment was “a major victory” that will allow his client to “move forward in his life and feel that he received some form of justice from the state of Ohio.”
Gilbert said he wasn’t sure what D’Ambrosio intends to do with the money. “But I don’t think he’s going to be a spendthrift,” Gilbert said. “I think he’s going to make sure that this is his safety net for the rest of his life.”
Tyler Sinclair, a spokesman for Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley, said in a statement Monday that it’s “beyond dispute” that D’Ambrosio admitted to participating in the kidnapping and assault of Klann.
“That he is being compensated for his actions at taxpayers’ expense is appalling,” Sinclair stated.
D’Ambrosio’s high-profile case helped lead to reforms in the way prosecutors and defense attorneys exchange evidence before a trial. Since his release, D’Ambrosio, now in his early 60s, has become an anti-death penalty advocate who has worked to change state lawmakers’ minds about capital punishment.
After Klann’s body was found in September 1988, authorities accused D’Ambrosio, Thomas Keenan and Edward Espinoza of abducting and killing Klann while they were trying to find Klann’s roommate, whom they suspected of stealing drugs from them.
D’Ambrosio and Keenan were sentenced to death after Espinoza cut a deal with prosecutors to testify against the two in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.
However, in 2006 a North Olmsted priest who befriended D’Ambrosio obtained case files with evidence that prosecutors withheld from D’Ambrosio’s attorneys, including that detectives concluded Klann couldn’t have been killed at Doan Creek as Espinoza said.
Two years after D’Ambrosio was released, a judge declared him to have been wrongfully imprisoned, making him eligible for compensation. But the Ohio Supreme Court overturned that ruling in 2014 because state law at the time required prosecutorial misconduct to have occurred after the person was sentenced instead of during the trial phase.
State lawmakers changed the law in 2019 so that D’Ambrosio and others could seek compensation. Last year a court again found him to be wrongfully imprisoned over objections from O’Malley’s office, opening the door to the $1 million payment.