Death Row Stories (2014–…): Season 1, Episode 3 - Blood & Water - full transcript
On this episode of Death Row Stories...
A terrifying crime.
The victim was so innocent.
A condemned man fights for his life.
No matter how much I begged, no one listens
to a convicted murderer.
Until a passionate priest
helps dig for the truth.
My heart just dropped
into the pit of my stomach
and I'm thinking, what else is here?
It's the biggest smoke
screen I've ever seen in my life.
There's a body under water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair,
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
Cleveland is like a big small town.
We have, like, one of everything you need.
Little Italy has the houses
almost like stacked on top
of each other, so close.
And it seems like everybody knows somebody
that knows somebody.
So, for this to happen in Little Italy...
It was a horrible crime in the sense that,
- it is a tight-knit community where
things "don't happen" - like that.
At 1:30 on Saturday,
September 24th, 1988,
a jogger noticed something
floating in Doan Creek.
A narrow waterway that
twists through Rockefeller Park
in Cleveland, Ohio.
The case began when a jogger,
found the body
of this poor young victim.
Two other detectives handled the scene...
...took a bunch of photographs,
made a short report.
Detectives noticed
immediately that the victim's
neck was sliced open from ear to ear.
The victim, a young male who appeared to be
in his early 20's,
also had three stab wounds in his chest,
and small cuts to his wrist and elbow.
He was wearing no shoes,
and the only thing on him
was $7 found in his pocket.
No weapons or blood
were found at the scene.
The young man remained unidentified,
'cause he had no identification on him.
With no leads, police were baffled
by the case
until two days after the body was found,
when they received a mysterious phone call
from a man who claimed to
have knowledge of the crime.
- Police asked if the caller could
come in to help - ID the body.
That morning, homicide detective Leo Allen
was at the morgue, working on another case.
We got notified by the morgue personnel
that a man was there
who thought he could
identify the young man that
was found on Saturday.
And that's how we got started.
The man who came to the morgue
was Paul Lewis,
widely know by his nickname, "Stoney".
Apparently because of
his affinity for being high.
Stoney identified the victim
as his upstairs neighbor,
Tony Klann.
Tony Klann was 19. Only a year earlier,
he had left home.
His father told me that
he had written a note
in which he said, "I emancipate myself."
So this was I think a young man searching
for his own identity.
Stoney Lewis had last seen Tony
on Friday night,
drinking at a bar called Coconut Joe's.
Tony was with three co-workers.
Mike Keenan, 39, owner of a local business
called Sunshine Landscaping.
Eddie Espinoza, 26, the company's foreman
and another part-time employee,
27 year old Joe D'Ambrosio.
Stoney Lewis said that
before he left the bar,
he saw a series of heated arguments
between Tony and Eddie Espinoza,
with Espinoza pushing Tony around
and threatening him.
According to Stoney,
that was just the beginning.
A couple of witnesses were sleeping
at 3 o'clock, Friday night,
early Saturday morning.
And they were awakened,
by loud noises and yelling.
And they saw Joe, Mike and Eddie
banging on doors looking for Paul Lewis,
and they had Tony Klann in the truck.
Apparently, Mike Keenan, Eddie Espinoza
and Joe D'Ambrosio
were convinced that Stoney Lewis had stolen
drugs from them.
And they were forcing Tony Klann to lead
them to Stoney.
Tony had been crying. He looked like he had
been beat a little bit.
And they saw Joe D'Ambrosio
with a knife to his throat.
And this is all at 3
o'clock in the morning,
Saturday morning.
Stoney Lewis's story was all detectives
needed to hear.
We went up into Cleveland Heights.
And took five Cleveland
Heights policemen with us.
And we went to Joe D'Ambrosio's apartment,
1732 Coventry road.
- Eddie Espinoza answered the
door and was placed - under arrest.
Next, police searched for Joe.
First thing in the morning,
the cops break in.
I'm all the way in the back in the bathroom
sitting on the toilet.
All I see is the door fling open and I see
two guys in plain clothes
with guns pointing at me.
And I'm like, "Oh, what the heck is this?"
Even without a warrant, police searched
Joe's apartment.
We did recover three large knives,
and several other smaller items,
some clothing,
and we confiscated all kinds of stuff
that we found there.
- A black pickup truck, later
determined to belong - to Mike Keenan,
Was parked in the driveway,
and impounded by police.
Mike Keenan was arrested the following day.
From there, things moved fast.
At the station,
Eddie Espinoza immediately began talking.
Eddie Espinoza told a story about
Mike Keenan and Joe
D'Ambrosio forcing Tony Klann
into Mike Keenan's pickup truck.
- They went around looking for Stoney
Lewis. Stoney Lewis - couldn't be found,
And evidently in frustration
decided to kill Tony Klann.
Eddie's story is that they drove down
by Doan Creek.
Mike Keenan,
the driver got out of the truck,
and was standing behind Anthony,
telling him, "Where is Stoney?
Where is Stoney?"
And he kept saying,
"I don't know where he is."
Keenan says, "Put your head back."
And that's when he come out with a 11-inch
hunting knife and slit his throat.
Pushed him into the creek,
and told Joe D' Ambrosio, "Finish the job."
At this point, Espinoza said he heard
Tony screaming for mercy.
Crying out, "Please don't kill me!"
Joe grabbed the knife,
jumped into the creek,
and put three big holes in
that boy's chest and killed him.
That's Eddie Espinoza's story.
My partner and I both felt
that this man was telling us the truth.
Based mainly on Espinoza's account,
police charged Mike Keenan
and Joe D'Ambrosio with aggravated murder.
Each would face the death penalty.
Joe's court appointed
lawyer convinced him to waive
his right to a jury trial.
I haven't a clue of the law.
So whatever they said, I did.
The prosecution was handled
by a tough veteran litigator
named Carmen Marino.
On this case, from my standpoint,
it was a job well done
by the police officers.
They investigated a good case
and brought in good witnesses.
There was nothing in
this case that I had to do
that the police didn't already do,
and that's rare.
At trial, the state's case
hinged on Eddie Espinoza's
eyewitness account
of the murder,
and the testimony of Stoney Lewis.
To defend himself, Joe took the stand,
but his only alibi was that
he was home alone, sleeping.
The prosecutors just tore me apart.
You know,
and my attorneys did absolutely nothing.
And that was it. Case was over.
They found me guilty of this crime.
Joe was sentenced to death.
My trial was the shortest
death penalty trial
in Ohio's history.
Two and 3/4 days from,
"Let's start" to, "You die."
That's how fast it was.
Mike Keenan also
received the death penalty.
Eddie Espinoza got 15 years.
In march 1989, Joe D'Ambrosio
arrived on death row at Lucasville prison
in Southern Ohio.
He maintained his innocence.
"It's a nightmare.
It's got to be a nightmare.
And I have to wake up. I really,
really do."
And you don't wakeup.
And it just goes on.
No matter who I wrote
and how much I begged,
no one listens to a convicted murderer.
"Oh, they all say they didn't do it."
In the fall of 1998,
ten years after Joe D'Ambrosio
was convicted of murder
and sentenced to death,
his mother passed away.
Joe was not allowed to leave death row,
so a catholic priest and former lawyer
named Neil Kookoothe
decided to attend her
funeral on Joe's behalf.
I asked the corrections officers,
"Would you let me talk with
Joe for just a few minutes
so that I can walk him
through his mother's funeral?"
And while Joe was very appreciative of it,
it was obvious that
my goal for that meeting
and his goal were were not the same.
I'm like, "Oh man, a real human being
I can talk to.
I need help. Nobody will help me.
I didn't do this."
And I was very resistant to doing that.
I knew that these death row cases
were immense cases,
you know, five, ten, fifteen volumes long.
So I'm, like, "No, it's one one volume big,
that's all it is."
"One volume?"
That's where the attorney of him kicked in.
I was just stunned.
That a man could be brought to trial,
for his life,
and be convicted and the amount of space
that it took to record that event
was in one volume.
And so I thought, "Whoa,
something's not right."
In addition to being a priest,
and a lawyer,
Neil was a registered nurse
with fifteen years
experience in critical care.
It's one of those, like,
if you're a believer,
it's a God moment.
A priest who's an RN and an attorney.
I mean, where did that come from?
And he shows up right at Joe's cell.
The thing that struck me right away was
the coroner's testimony.
Anthony Klann had
sustained a very significant
and deep neck wound, from ear to ear.
That neck wound opened up
two large holes in Anthony's trachea.
But at trial, state eyewitness
Eddie Espinoza
claimed he heard Tony
Klann scream for mercy
after his throat had been slit.
I worked with trachea patients everyday.
So I knew,
if you can find the hole in your trachea
and you plug it perhaps,
you might be able to
make a noise.
It might sound something like this.
And so there is no way that Anthony Klann
could be running down a creek bed.
Trying to plug two holes
in his trachea so that
he could scream for his life.
After visiting the crime scene, Father Neil
had other suspicions
about Espinoza's testimony.
Joe supposedly grabs the knife
and goes after Anthony in the creek bed,
stabbing him,
and yet there were no tire tracks
or anything on the side of the creek.
And so, I thought, "Whoa, something's
not right here."
Neil believed Espinoza had to be lying.
But a witness who was
lying did not necessarily mean
Joe was telling the truth.
Neil needed to know more
about Joe's background.
Joe's father died when he was 17 years old.
Joe is the only boy in the family
and so his father's death
was very traumatic for him.
I had to become the breadwinner.
And as soon as I graduated,
I went right into the military.
I was what they call a shade tree mechanic.
I worked on everything
from a jeep all the way up
to a 35,000kW generator
that used to launch missiles.
I loved it.
Joe worked his way up to sergeant and was
honorably discharged.
But when he returned to
the distressed economy
of 1980's rust belt Cleveland,
Joe couldn't find work.
He thought he was a certified mechanic.
I don't know what
certification is in the military
but people were telling him, "you're not
a certified mechanic."
In the spring of 1988,
Joe moved into a basement apartment
near Little Italy.
He lived down in the Coventry area,
which, at the time was,
you know,
something a lot of 20-somethings did.
They were blue collar
workers and they partied a lot.
I wasn't an angel.
I drank, I well, I drank like a fish.
Right across the street
from where I was living
was a bar called, "The Saloon".
And I was in there
throwing darts one day and...
Ed Espinoza,
the foreman for Mike Keenan, came in,
and just threw out a general question,
"Who needs a job?"
And he hired me as a landscaper plus
home repair work.
I started work the next day, September 1st.
September 26th, I'm sitting in jail.
In contrast to Joe's story,
Neil discovered that the man
who put Joe on death row,
Eddie Espinoza, had a very
checkered past.
Eddie Espinoza was someone who in court
admitted that he was an alcoholic,
also a drug abuser, a welfare cheat.
He was someone who was known to drink
a 12 pack of beer,
would follow that up with snorting cocaine
and follow that up with tequila shots.
But Eddie Espinoza
had agreed to a plea deal
with prosecutors.
And so,
his story became the prevailing narrative.
There's absolutely no motive here
that would impel Joe D'Ambrosio to inflict
harm upon Anthony Klann.
Given what he had learned so far, Neil
was feeling that something
had gone terribly wrong
in the police investigation
of Tony Klann's murder.
Stoney Lewis points his fingers
and they stop focusing on any other person
or any other circumstances
that might literally take them
away from their case solved.
Remember they had this crime solved,
according
to them, within a day.
And so the investigation
was only to gather evidence
to support a theory that they already had.
But if Joe was indeed an innocent man
on death row,
Neil would have to
figure out how to prove it.
I was so angry when I got locked up.
I couldn't understand
how this could happen.
I must have been angry for months.
And then one day,
I was like, "You know what,
I'm sick and tired of this.
"I have to start learning the law."
Because I knew if I
went back for a retrial,
I can prove that I didn't do this.
As Father Neil Kookoothe looked into
Joe D'Ambrosio's case,
he became suspicious that prosecutors had
not told Joe's defense team
everything they knew about
he murder of Tony Klann.
I felt, you know, from the neck wound
to the scene at the crime
it seemed like at every other turn
there was more that was being discovered.
Neil was also shocked to
learn that in 1988,
Ohio law did not require
the state authorities
to share all their
evidence with defendants.
What would happen back in those days
is that the prosecutor
- would look at their files and they
would determine - what to hand over
- or to reveal to the defense attorneys,
and that's what - they would get.
The Sixth Amendment,
protects your right to an attorney,
the right is no good if your attorney
doesn't have the information.
In addition to Ohio's draconian
discovery laws,
Neil would also learn that
the prosecutor in Joe's case,
Carmen Marino,
had his own controversial reputation.
With Carmen Marino, there's 10 cases
where he had been
reprimanded by the courts.
I summarized it as, "cheating to win."
Get a conviction at all costs
seemed to be the approach.
And let the truth fall where it may.
In fact in the Tony Klann murder case,
Marino was cited by the
Ohio Supreme Court for
prosecutorial misconduct
in the trial of Joe's co-defendant,
Mike Keenan.
I gave a good closing argument.
And I ended by taking this big bully knife,
and stabbing it at the evidence desk.
That's the prosecutorial
misconduct that was alleged.
And my argument was,
- "You're criticizing me for
stabbing this knife - in the desk
When that was the knife
that slashed this kid's throat
when they murdered him."
I said,
"You think that's the balance that should
overturn the case?"
Well, it was.
- Because of Marino's antics,
Mike Keenan received - a new trial.
But once again,
he was convicted and received
a death sentence.
By 2001,
Joe D'Ambrosio had been on death row
for over 12 years.
His state appeals had all been rejected.
His execution could come at any time.
Our legal system is
just designed to make it
very, very difficult
to prove that someone didn't commit a crime
after they've already been convicted.
You're talking,
the most uphill of uphill battles.
Father Neil was desperate
to help prove Joe's innocence.
But in order to get a new trial,
they had to
find new evidence.
So Neil took a new approach.
I thought, well,
one of the things I need to do
to get help is media attention.
And one of the first
media outlets that I got was
the Cleveland Scene magazine.
Neil Kookoothe came into the office
just a couple of weeks
after I joined the staff.
Neil didn't oversell what
he believed to be Joe's
case of actual innocence.
He came to me with
pieces of the case that he felt
were questionable.
Kuz interviewed dozens of witnesses
and discovered information
that Joe's defense
didn't have at trial.
I got in touch with the two detectives
who first responded to this case.
And confirmed my instinct
that there was more to the story
than had previously been told.
The human body holds
eight to ten pints of blood.
When Tony's body was found,
he had two pints of blood left.
Yet there was no blood
or forensic evidence of any
kind along the river bank.
Based in part on that,
the two detectives were adamant
that Tony Klann had
been murdered elsewhere,
not at the river bank as
Eddie Espinoza had claimed.
Now,
if the location of the murder is different
from what the key
prosecution witness is claiming,
that's a pretty big discrepancy.
But the lead detective on the case,
Leo Allen,
didn't visit the river bank
until four or five days after the murder.
We're involved in other cases.
It's not the only case we have.
My goodness,
we got all kinds of work to do.
So there was no reason for my partner and I
actually to go back there
to see what we could see.
But we did go back there
just to see where the heck it happened.
The two original detectives
were never called
to testify at Joe's trial.
- The prosecutor suggested to the defense
- trial counsel
That they didn't need
to talk to anybody else
except Detective Allen
which is pretty suspicious conduct,
trying to keep
the views of the officers
first on the scene away
from defense counsel.
Kuz also reported
about the lack of physical
evidence in the case.
You had no forensic evidence,
blood, tissue, hair
on the knife that was supposedly used
that killed Tony Klann.
You had no blood that was
found in the pickup truck,
you had no blood on
Mike Keenan's clothes or
Joe D'Ambrosio's clothes.
That's a lot of question marks.
Kuz's article also
highlighted a discrepancy
in Eddie Espinoza's story about which night
the murder took place.
There were question marks
about when the murder occurred.
Whether it was Thursday
night or Friday night.
- Tony Klann had been with Mike Keenan
and Joe D'Ambrosio - for a short time.
A manager from Coconut Joe's had told me,
he remembered
those guys being there
Thursday night when the
bar held its tequila shot night.
But not on Friday night.
But late Friday night
was when the state had
argued the murder took place.
There's evidence of testimony
that they're all drinking,
Thursday night.
And the state tried to take two days
and put them into one.
How can you, based on that information,
convict two men and sentence them to die?
Kuz's article was a turning
point in Joe's case.
It was the seminal story
that began to unravel things
and to cause people to look deeper.
But the most explosive bombshell would come
from Kuz's conversation
with Tony Klann's father, Richard.
Someone the police had neglected to
thoroughly interview.
He shared something
with me that I had heard
no one else mention.
As journalist Martin Kuz
was researching his article
about death row inmate,
Joe D'Ambrosio,
he was finally able to make contact
with the murder victim's father, Richard.
Richard and I spoke on the phone,
and it was a long conversation.
By time we actually finished,
I was the last
person in the office.
Richard Klann gave Kuz a fuller portrait
of his son Tony
who along with his sister had been adopted.
They had been into foster
homes a couple of times.
And so we did everything
we could to help the kids
be comfortable and safe where we lived.
Growing up, a learning disability had
made things difficult for Tony.
Because of all the teasing
and the other things that
went on in his early life,
um, he didn't fit in real well.
Tony barely finished high school.
But in late August, 1988,
he told his dad he wanted to
start a lawn mowing business.
I was going to help him
with that. I was going
to help him get a truck.
Well, he never called me that weekend.
And I found out on Monday that he had
been killed on Friday.
It was the coldest day in my life.
As we covered all of this ground, he shared
something with me
that I had heard no one else mention.
He said that Tony Klann had told him,
Richard,
that he had witnessed a rape
in the apartment building where he lived.
I understood that there
was going to be a trial
and Tony was going
to be a witness for that.
After we hung up, I felt like I needed
to share that information with Neil.
Martin told me that. And I went down to
the Justice Center.
I pulled Anthony Klann's file.
And I discovered that he
indeed had witnessed a rape.
And that the rape victim was a young man
by the name of Christopher Longenecker.
- And you don't really hear about
male-on-male rape - all that often.
Uh, and to me that suggests
a whole another degree of violence.
But then it went a step further
because it was that the man
who had been arrested for the rape
was Stoney Lewis.
- The same Stoney Lewis
who had first tipped - off police
That Joe,
Keenan and Espinoza might be the ones
responsible for Tony's murder.
My heart just dropped
into the pit of my stomach.
And I'm thinking, "Oh, my God,
the deceased in this case
"has witnessed a rape."
And the rapist is the man
who is pointing his finger
at other men.
But if Neil was able to connect these two
cases in an afternoon,
why hadn't police and
prosecutors done the same?
The prosecutor of Joe's case was
Carmen Marino.
And it turned out that the
prosecutor of the rape case
was Carmen Marino.
At the same time.
So it doesn't take too
much to ask that you put
two and two together.
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't,
I didn't see any connection.
Who would murder him for what reason?
Contrary to what you may hear,
it's truly extraordinary
that someone would
murder another witness to
keep them from testifying.
But to Joe D'Ambrosio's defense team,
it seemed very connected.
Tony Klann was the only eyewitness
that was called by either side,
um, for that trial.
The only eyewitness suddenly ends up killed
and the case goes away.
To us, that was a far
better motive and opportunity
than what the prosecution had theorized.
In order to prove their theory,
Joe's team would need to interview
the alleged rape victim.
But Chris Longenecker
had vanished without a trace.
The new discoveries in Joe's
case caught the attention of
one of the most
prominent law firms in town,
Jones Day, which agreed to fight for Joe on
a pro bono basis.
It was like night and day.
It went from,
"I have two appeals left and then
they're going to murder me."
to,
"Now I have Neil and all these resources
from the world's third largest
law firm backing me up."
- Armed with the fact that prosecutor,
- Carmen Marino
Had withheld information,
Joe's team submitted
a sweeping discovery request
to the Federal District Court.
To me,
it just seemed like a logical question,
"What else is in there?"
Meanwhile,
the alleged rape victim, the only
person who could
corroborate what Tony Klann
had witnessed was finally
located living in Florida.
And it would be up to Neil
to convince him to testify.
Thirteen years after
Joe D'Ambrosio had been
sentenced to death,
Federal Judge Kathleen
O'Malley finally granted
Joe's defense team
access to all police and prosecutor files
related to his case.
They turned over a
stack of paper like a foot
and a half thick.
It was the first major judgment
to go Joe's way since he'd been convicted.
The way to get a new trial
was to show that a constitutional
violation had occurred.
In other words, the failure to
turn over exculpatory evidence,
evidence that tended to
prove that he was innocent,
would've mattered to a jury.
I took every page and I
went through line by line.
Some of the most compelling evidence
concerns Stoney Lewis,
including police reports
about suspicious activity
at Stoney's apartment
the morning Tony Klann was killed.
The lady that lived next door to Stoney
heard a loud violent argument
on, get this, Saturday morning.
She called the police.
They hid that from us.
There's witness statements
again in police and prosecutor files
that I think it was an older couple said
they heard someone say,
"Let's dump the body in the basement."
Joe and his lawyers believed that
at the very least
- the withheld evidence provided reasonable
doubt that the crime - could have happened
Differently than the
state presented at trial.
In July 2004,
Joe's team went before Judge O'Malley
to obtain a new trial.
We put up all our witnesses,
the newly discovered people,
the newly discovered evidence.
By far the most powerful
witness at the hearing
was Chris Longenecker,
Stoney Lewis's alleged rape victim,
who had been
found living in Florida.
Neil convinced Chris that his testimony
could save Joe's life.
I wasn't able to do
anything for Tony 'cause...
And so I figured,
if I could help someone else,
then I'll do that.
Chris, who is legally blind and was born
with a physical disability
on the left side of his
body was 22 years old
and Tony Klann's roommate back in 1988.
He told the court what happened one evening
when he was hanging around
with his downstairs neighbor,
Stoney Lewis.
We went back to his
place to hang out.
And decided to make something to eat,
I guess.
And he started pressing
up against me and crap.
And I was like, "Dude, what the hell
are you doing?"
I told him I wasn't into that.
And uh...
He was a little bit more threatening,
he started pulling
my hair and uh...
Some hands on stuff. And uh...
And so that happened and...
And there was some fair issues there from
the fact he had a firearm in his apartment.
And the whole time that
I was being assaulted,
I told him,
"This is not consensual, this is rape."
Chris says that just after the rape,
Tony Klann showed up at Stoney's apartment.
There was a knock at his door.
It was Tony Klann.
And then I left when Tony left.
'Cause I figured that was my way out.
I told him that Paul Lewis raped me.
And uh...
Sort of, freaked out a little bit.
And then I went to the police department
and filed a report.
Soon after,
Stoney was arrested and indicted for
reportedly raping Chris.
He spent a few weeks in jail
before being released on bond.
But when it was time for
Stoney's pretrial hearing,
Chris missed the court date.
And I misread and...
The court date or memorized a wrong date.
And uh...
so I called them,
and that's when they told
me that I was a day late,
and that Paul Lewis went free.
After Tony's murder,
Chris called the police
and mentioned the connection
to the earlier rape case.
I never accused Paul Lewis
of murdering Tony Klann.
I just told someone of authority that
all the people in both cases...
know one another.
But I guess they paid no attention to that.
When you hear Chris Longenecker
tell the story about what happened to him,
and who Paul Lewis really
is based on that event,
then you start to
imagine that this is a guy
who could've orchestrated
this type of crime.
Following the hearing,
Joe felt good about his chances
of getting a new trial.
But the decision would not come quickly.
Two years,
Judge O'Malley took two years to rule.
Finally, in March 2006,
the judge released her decision.
She overturned my case.
She granted me my retrial,
what I've wanted all along.
I wanted my day in court.
She said, "Look, no reasonable jury
would've convicted him
"if it had heard this evidence."
When that ruling
finally comes out,
I mean, such elation.
The combination of 15 years of pleading
and searching for the truth,
because Joe always said,
"The evidence will prove that
I didn't kill Anthony Klann."
Carmen Marino who retired in 2002 strongly
disagreed with the decision.
I'm disappointed. You got to understand,
it's disappointment from
the standpoint that those
cases were well tried.
In my considered opinion,
there is a very limited
trialability on many judges.
They don't understand
the full dynamics either of
investigating a criminal case
or trying a criminal trial.
Marino also disputed that
he withheld evidence.
We strictly followed the Ohio law.
If it was in my file,
they saw it or heard it.
- In addition to what the law required us
- to give them.
I gave them copies of everything that
they're entitled to.
Like Marino, the state of Ohio stood firm.
And of course, after she gave it to me,
they appealed it.
So I had my retrial,
but I couldn't go nowhere.
The prosecutor's office began preparing
for another trial.
Convinced they could
reconvict Joe and put him
to death once and for all.
By 2009, Joe D'Ambrosio's murder
conviction had been overturned
by a federal judge.
But since the state chose to retry him,
Joe still sat on death row, waiting.
The Cuyahoga County
Prosecutor's Office wanted
to preserve a conviction,
which is typical of many
prosecutor's offices.
No matter what evidence
you give them to the contrary,
they're going to do everything
to protect that conviction.
In February 2009, pretrial hearings began,
presided over by Judge Joan Synenberg.
By the time the case landed
in my courtroom,
someone had been sitting on death row
for over two decades.
This is very serious.
Because of mistakes that were made,
a process was flawed.
All I wanted to do was make sure that
the process was fair.
But just days before
the trial was to begin,
prosecutors disclosed
they had found additional
evidence in their files.
Despite having a Federal Court order,
in fact, there was physical evidence
that had not been turned over to Joe's
trial counsel.
Not only in 1988, but in this particular
proceeding itself.
It was a circus.
And I'm sitting out there
watching it in total disbelief.
Total disbelief.
The sudden release of new
evidence would delay Joe's
retrial even more.
So Joe's attorneys
petitioned the court for bail.
The state of Ohio said,
"It would be unheard of
"for a judge to let a man
off of death row on bond.",
And I said, "I agree."
He's not on death row,
he stands convicted of nothing
and based on what seemed
to be extensive community
support, I set a bail.
- Yeah.
Judge Synenberg lets him out of jail
on a $50,000 bond with a leg brace.
- That, to me, is the most appalling
thing anyone - could ever do.
Joe was released on house arrest.
- No comments.
- No comments.
Okay.
For the first time in 20 years,
Joe would go to sleep some place other than
an eight-by-ten jail cell.
Prison is always noise, 24/7.
Never silent.
Never dark.
For half my life.
So to sit in utter silence,
is amazing.
'Cause that's what I used to
do when I was at the house.
- I would turn off the lights and
sit in utter silence - for hours.
But there was still one more battle to go.
As Joe's retrial was
finally about to start,
news broke that Eddie Espinoza had
died of liver failure.
Espinoza had served only 12 years in prison
before being set free.
Despite losing their star witness,
the state asked the court
to admit into evidence
Espinoza's testimony from 1988.
I said, "No"
- because Mr. D'Ambrosio would not
have not had - his constitutional right
To confront someone who's not there.
I didn't see any reason
to permit testimony from
years ago in a process
that was already tainted.
The state pursued the
case for seven more months,
but without Espinoza's testimony, they had
little against Joe.
Finally, in March 2010,
Judge Synenberg dismissed all charges
and ordered that Joe be released
from house arrest.
Joe D'Ambrosio is free.
And should exonerate him.
Look at his record, it's gone.
And with that, case is over.
They can never put
me back in jail for this.
The original prosecution team was outraged
with the court's decision.
- You know, some things just
don't go the way - they ought to
In terms of equity and justice.
The case hasn't changed in 25 years,
it's not going to change.
They're the ones that
murdered this innocent guy.
It's the biggest smoke
screen I've ever seen in my life.
The judge is bought.
After his exoneration,
Joe went to work as a maintenance man
at Neil's parish,
the Church of St. Clarence
in North Olmsted, Ohio.
The state did absolutely
positively nothing for me
because I'm an exonoree.
I'm the sixth in Ohio history
and 148th in the United States
to be exonerated.
They do nothing for us.
Nothing at all.
They open the door,
they kick you out, "Get out."
Everything that I fought for,
for this country
was taken from me.
Every last single right,
for dang near 80 percent of my adult life.
Joe knows that he owes his freedom
and his life to one man.
If it wasn't for Neil,
I would've been murdered
10 years ago, easily,
and the state wouldn't have batted an eye.
It was just a matter of, I think,
common human decency,
and a matter of justice.
I was astonished...
at how far wrong the system can go.
And how slow it works.
And how much is at stake.
Joe and Neil travel
around Ohio speaking out
against the death penalty.
I started finding out that the things that
he was telling me
could be independently verified.
That I'm here is a blessing from God.
I prayed for him to end this nightmare.
I wanted it right then and there,
but he answered my prayers.
It just took 22 years, that's all.
A terrifying crime.
The victim was so innocent.
A condemned man fights for his life.
No matter how much I begged, no one listens
to a convicted murderer.
Until a passionate priest
helps dig for the truth.
My heart just dropped
into the pit of my stomach
and I'm thinking, what else is here?
It's the biggest smoke
screen I've ever seen in my life.
There's a body under water.
He was butchered and murdered.
Many people proclaim their innocence.
In this case,
there are a number of things that stink.
This man is remorseless.
He needs to pay for it with his life.
The electric chair,
flashed in front of my eyes.
Get a conviction at all costs.
Let the truth fall where it may.
Cleveland is like a big small town.
We have, like, one of everything you need.
Little Italy has the houses
almost like stacked on top
of each other, so close.
And it seems like everybody knows somebody
that knows somebody.
So, for this to happen in Little Italy...
It was a horrible crime in the sense that,
- it is a tight-knit community where
things "don't happen" - like that.
At 1:30 on Saturday,
September 24th, 1988,
a jogger noticed something
floating in Doan Creek.
A narrow waterway that
twists through Rockefeller Park
in Cleveland, Ohio.
The case began when a jogger,
found the body
of this poor young victim.
Two other detectives handled the scene...
...took a bunch of photographs,
made a short report.
Detectives noticed
immediately that the victim's
neck was sliced open from ear to ear.
The victim, a young male who appeared to be
in his early 20's,
also had three stab wounds in his chest,
and small cuts to his wrist and elbow.
He was wearing no shoes,
and the only thing on him
was $7 found in his pocket.
No weapons or blood
were found at the scene.
The young man remained unidentified,
'cause he had no identification on him.
With no leads, police were baffled
by the case
until two days after the body was found,
when they received a mysterious phone call
from a man who claimed to
have knowledge of the crime.
- Police asked if the caller could
come in to help - ID the body.
That morning, homicide detective Leo Allen
was at the morgue, working on another case.
We got notified by the morgue personnel
that a man was there
who thought he could
identify the young man that
was found on Saturday.
And that's how we got started.
The man who came to the morgue
was Paul Lewis,
widely know by his nickname, "Stoney".
Apparently because of
his affinity for being high.
Stoney identified the victim
as his upstairs neighbor,
Tony Klann.
Tony Klann was 19. Only a year earlier,
he had left home.
His father told me that
he had written a note
in which he said, "I emancipate myself."
So this was I think a young man searching
for his own identity.
Stoney Lewis had last seen Tony
on Friday night,
drinking at a bar called Coconut Joe's.
Tony was with three co-workers.
Mike Keenan, 39, owner of a local business
called Sunshine Landscaping.
Eddie Espinoza, 26, the company's foreman
and another part-time employee,
27 year old Joe D'Ambrosio.
Stoney Lewis said that
before he left the bar,
he saw a series of heated arguments
between Tony and Eddie Espinoza,
with Espinoza pushing Tony around
and threatening him.
According to Stoney,
that was just the beginning.
A couple of witnesses were sleeping
at 3 o'clock, Friday night,
early Saturday morning.
And they were awakened,
by loud noises and yelling.
And they saw Joe, Mike and Eddie
banging on doors looking for Paul Lewis,
and they had Tony Klann in the truck.
Apparently, Mike Keenan, Eddie Espinoza
and Joe D'Ambrosio
were convinced that Stoney Lewis had stolen
drugs from them.
And they were forcing Tony Klann to lead
them to Stoney.
Tony had been crying. He looked like he had
been beat a little bit.
And they saw Joe D'Ambrosio
with a knife to his throat.
And this is all at 3
o'clock in the morning,
Saturday morning.
Stoney Lewis's story was all detectives
needed to hear.
We went up into Cleveland Heights.
And took five Cleveland
Heights policemen with us.
And we went to Joe D'Ambrosio's apartment,
1732 Coventry road.
- Eddie Espinoza answered the
door and was placed - under arrest.
Next, police searched for Joe.
First thing in the morning,
the cops break in.
I'm all the way in the back in the bathroom
sitting on the toilet.
All I see is the door fling open and I see
two guys in plain clothes
with guns pointing at me.
And I'm like, "Oh, what the heck is this?"
Even without a warrant, police searched
Joe's apartment.
We did recover three large knives,
and several other smaller items,
some clothing,
and we confiscated all kinds of stuff
that we found there.
- A black pickup truck, later
determined to belong - to Mike Keenan,
Was parked in the driveway,
and impounded by police.
Mike Keenan was arrested the following day.
From there, things moved fast.
At the station,
Eddie Espinoza immediately began talking.
Eddie Espinoza told a story about
Mike Keenan and Joe
D'Ambrosio forcing Tony Klann
into Mike Keenan's pickup truck.
- They went around looking for Stoney
Lewis. Stoney Lewis - couldn't be found,
And evidently in frustration
decided to kill Tony Klann.
Eddie's story is that they drove down
by Doan Creek.
Mike Keenan,
the driver got out of the truck,
and was standing behind Anthony,
telling him, "Where is Stoney?
Where is Stoney?"
And he kept saying,
"I don't know where he is."
Keenan says, "Put your head back."
And that's when he come out with a 11-inch
hunting knife and slit his throat.
Pushed him into the creek,
and told Joe D' Ambrosio, "Finish the job."
At this point, Espinoza said he heard
Tony screaming for mercy.
Crying out, "Please don't kill me!"
Joe grabbed the knife,
jumped into the creek,
and put three big holes in
that boy's chest and killed him.
That's Eddie Espinoza's story.
My partner and I both felt
that this man was telling us the truth.
Based mainly on Espinoza's account,
police charged Mike Keenan
and Joe D'Ambrosio with aggravated murder.
Each would face the death penalty.
Joe's court appointed
lawyer convinced him to waive
his right to a jury trial.
I haven't a clue of the law.
So whatever they said, I did.
The prosecution was handled
by a tough veteran litigator
named Carmen Marino.
On this case, from my standpoint,
it was a job well done
by the police officers.
They investigated a good case
and brought in good witnesses.
There was nothing in
this case that I had to do
that the police didn't already do,
and that's rare.
At trial, the state's case
hinged on Eddie Espinoza's
eyewitness account
of the murder,
and the testimony of Stoney Lewis.
To defend himself, Joe took the stand,
but his only alibi was that
he was home alone, sleeping.
The prosecutors just tore me apart.
You know,
and my attorneys did absolutely nothing.
And that was it. Case was over.
They found me guilty of this crime.
Joe was sentenced to death.
My trial was the shortest
death penalty trial
in Ohio's history.
Two and 3/4 days from,
"Let's start" to, "You die."
That's how fast it was.
Mike Keenan also
received the death penalty.
Eddie Espinoza got 15 years.
In march 1989, Joe D'Ambrosio
arrived on death row at Lucasville prison
in Southern Ohio.
He maintained his innocence.
"It's a nightmare.
It's got to be a nightmare.
And I have to wake up. I really,
really do."
And you don't wakeup.
And it just goes on.
No matter who I wrote
and how much I begged,
no one listens to a convicted murderer.
"Oh, they all say they didn't do it."
In the fall of 1998,
ten years after Joe D'Ambrosio
was convicted of murder
and sentenced to death,
his mother passed away.
Joe was not allowed to leave death row,
so a catholic priest and former lawyer
named Neil Kookoothe
decided to attend her
funeral on Joe's behalf.
I asked the corrections officers,
"Would you let me talk with
Joe for just a few minutes
so that I can walk him
through his mother's funeral?"
And while Joe was very appreciative of it,
it was obvious that
my goal for that meeting
and his goal were were not the same.
I'm like, "Oh man, a real human being
I can talk to.
I need help. Nobody will help me.
I didn't do this."
And I was very resistant to doing that.
I knew that these death row cases
were immense cases,
you know, five, ten, fifteen volumes long.
So I'm, like, "No, it's one one volume big,
that's all it is."
"One volume?"
That's where the attorney of him kicked in.
I was just stunned.
That a man could be brought to trial,
for his life,
and be convicted and the amount of space
that it took to record that event
was in one volume.
And so I thought, "Whoa,
something's not right."
In addition to being a priest,
and a lawyer,
Neil was a registered nurse
with fifteen years
experience in critical care.
It's one of those, like,
if you're a believer,
it's a God moment.
A priest who's an RN and an attorney.
I mean, where did that come from?
And he shows up right at Joe's cell.
The thing that struck me right away was
the coroner's testimony.
Anthony Klann had
sustained a very significant
and deep neck wound, from ear to ear.
That neck wound opened up
two large holes in Anthony's trachea.
But at trial, state eyewitness
Eddie Espinoza
claimed he heard Tony
Klann scream for mercy
after his throat had been slit.
I worked with trachea patients everyday.
So I knew,
if you can find the hole in your trachea
and you plug it perhaps,
you might be able to
make a noise.
It might sound something like this.
And so there is no way that Anthony Klann
could be running down a creek bed.
Trying to plug two holes
in his trachea so that
he could scream for his life.
After visiting the crime scene, Father Neil
had other suspicions
about Espinoza's testimony.
Joe supposedly grabs the knife
and goes after Anthony in the creek bed,
stabbing him,
and yet there were no tire tracks
or anything on the side of the creek.
And so, I thought, "Whoa, something's
not right here."
Neil believed Espinoza had to be lying.
But a witness who was
lying did not necessarily mean
Joe was telling the truth.
Neil needed to know more
about Joe's background.
Joe's father died when he was 17 years old.
Joe is the only boy in the family
and so his father's death
was very traumatic for him.
I had to become the breadwinner.
And as soon as I graduated,
I went right into the military.
I was what they call a shade tree mechanic.
I worked on everything
from a jeep all the way up
to a 35,000kW generator
that used to launch missiles.
I loved it.
Joe worked his way up to sergeant and was
honorably discharged.
But when he returned to
the distressed economy
of 1980's rust belt Cleveland,
Joe couldn't find work.
He thought he was a certified mechanic.
I don't know what
certification is in the military
but people were telling him, "you're not
a certified mechanic."
In the spring of 1988,
Joe moved into a basement apartment
near Little Italy.
He lived down in the Coventry area,
which, at the time was,
you know,
something a lot of 20-somethings did.
They were blue collar
workers and they partied a lot.
I wasn't an angel.
I drank, I well, I drank like a fish.
Right across the street
from where I was living
was a bar called, "The Saloon".
And I was in there
throwing darts one day and...
Ed Espinoza,
the foreman for Mike Keenan, came in,
and just threw out a general question,
"Who needs a job?"
And he hired me as a landscaper plus
home repair work.
I started work the next day, September 1st.
September 26th, I'm sitting in jail.
In contrast to Joe's story,
Neil discovered that the man
who put Joe on death row,
Eddie Espinoza, had a very
checkered past.
Eddie Espinoza was someone who in court
admitted that he was an alcoholic,
also a drug abuser, a welfare cheat.
He was someone who was known to drink
a 12 pack of beer,
would follow that up with snorting cocaine
and follow that up with tequila shots.
But Eddie Espinoza
had agreed to a plea deal
with prosecutors.
And so,
his story became the prevailing narrative.
There's absolutely no motive here
that would impel Joe D'Ambrosio to inflict
harm upon Anthony Klann.
Given what he had learned so far, Neil
was feeling that something
had gone terribly wrong
in the police investigation
of Tony Klann's murder.
Stoney Lewis points his fingers
and they stop focusing on any other person
or any other circumstances
that might literally take them
away from their case solved.
Remember they had this crime solved,
according
to them, within a day.
And so the investigation
was only to gather evidence
to support a theory that they already had.
But if Joe was indeed an innocent man
on death row,
Neil would have to
figure out how to prove it.
I was so angry when I got locked up.
I couldn't understand
how this could happen.
I must have been angry for months.
And then one day,
I was like, "You know what,
I'm sick and tired of this.
"I have to start learning the law."
Because I knew if I
went back for a retrial,
I can prove that I didn't do this.
As Father Neil Kookoothe looked into
Joe D'Ambrosio's case,
he became suspicious that prosecutors had
not told Joe's defense team
everything they knew about
he murder of Tony Klann.
I felt, you know, from the neck wound
to the scene at the crime
it seemed like at every other turn
there was more that was being discovered.
Neil was also shocked to
learn that in 1988,
Ohio law did not require
the state authorities
to share all their
evidence with defendants.
What would happen back in those days
is that the prosecutor
- would look at their files and they
would determine - what to hand over
- or to reveal to the defense attorneys,
and that's what - they would get.
The Sixth Amendment,
protects your right to an attorney,
the right is no good if your attorney
doesn't have the information.
In addition to Ohio's draconian
discovery laws,
Neil would also learn that
the prosecutor in Joe's case,
Carmen Marino,
had his own controversial reputation.
With Carmen Marino, there's 10 cases
where he had been
reprimanded by the courts.
I summarized it as, "cheating to win."
Get a conviction at all costs
seemed to be the approach.
And let the truth fall where it may.
In fact in the Tony Klann murder case,
Marino was cited by the
Ohio Supreme Court for
prosecutorial misconduct
in the trial of Joe's co-defendant,
Mike Keenan.
I gave a good closing argument.
And I ended by taking this big bully knife,
and stabbing it at the evidence desk.
That's the prosecutorial
misconduct that was alleged.
And my argument was,
- "You're criticizing me for
stabbing this knife - in the desk
When that was the knife
that slashed this kid's throat
when they murdered him."
I said,
"You think that's the balance that should
overturn the case?"
Well, it was.
- Because of Marino's antics,
Mike Keenan received - a new trial.
But once again,
he was convicted and received
a death sentence.
By 2001,
Joe D'Ambrosio had been on death row
for over 12 years.
His state appeals had all been rejected.
His execution could come at any time.
Our legal system is
just designed to make it
very, very difficult
to prove that someone didn't commit a crime
after they've already been convicted.
You're talking,
the most uphill of uphill battles.
Father Neil was desperate
to help prove Joe's innocence.
But in order to get a new trial,
they had to
find new evidence.
So Neil took a new approach.
I thought, well,
one of the things I need to do
to get help is media attention.
And one of the first
media outlets that I got was
the Cleveland Scene magazine.
Neil Kookoothe came into the office
just a couple of weeks
after I joined the staff.
Neil didn't oversell what
he believed to be Joe's
case of actual innocence.
He came to me with
pieces of the case that he felt
were questionable.
Kuz interviewed dozens of witnesses
and discovered information
that Joe's defense
didn't have at trial.
I got in touch with the two detectives
who first responded to this case.
And confirmed my instinct
that there was more to the story
than had previously been told.
The human body holds
eight to ten pints of blood.
When Tony's body was found,
he had two pints of blood left.
Yet there was no blood
or forensic evidence of any
kind along the river bank.
Based in part on that,
the two detectives were adamant
that Tony Klann had
been murdered elsewhere,
not at the river bank as
Eddie Espinoza had claimed.
Now,
if the location of the murder is different
from what the key
prosecution witness is claiming,
that's a pretty big discrepancy.
But the lead detective on the case,
Leo Allen,
didn't visit the river bank
until four or five days after the murder.
We're involved in other cases.
It's not the only case we have.
My goodness,
we got all kinds of work to do.
So there was no reason for my partner and I
actually to go back there
to see what we could see.
But we did go back there
just to see where the heck it happened.
The two original detectives
were never called
to testify at Joe's trial.
- The prosecutor suggested to the defense
- trial counsel
That they didn't need
to talk to anybody else
except Detective Allen
which is pretty suspicious conduct,
trying to keep
the views of the officers
first on the scene away
from defense counsel.
Kuz also reported
about the lack of physical
evidence in the case.
You had no forensic evidence,
blood, tissue, hair
on the knife that was supposedly used
that killed Tony Klann.
You had no blood that was
found in the pickup truck,
you had no blood on
Mike Keenan's clothes or
Joe D'Ambrosio's clothes.
That's a lot of question marks.
Kuz's article also
highlighted a discrepancy
in Eddie Espinoza's story about which night
the murder took place.
There were question marks
about when the murder occurred.
Whether it was Thursday
night or Friday night.
- Tony Klann had been with Mike Keenan
and Joe D'Ambrosio - for a short time.
A manager from Coconut Joe's had told me,
he remembered
those guys being there
Thursday night when the
bar held its tequila shot night.
But not on Friday night.
But late Friday night
was when the state had
argued the murder took place.
There's evidence of testimony
that they're all drinking,
Thursday night.
And the state tried to take two days
and put them into one.
How can you, based on that information,
convict two men and sentence them to die?
Kuz's article was a turning
point in Joe's case.
It was the seminal story
that began to unravel things
and to cause people to look deeper.
But the most explosive bombshell would come
from Kuz's conversation
with Tony Klann's father, Richard.
Someone the police had neglected to
thoroughly interview.
He shared something
with me that I had heard
no one else mention.
As journalist Martin Kuz
was researching his article
about death row inmate,
Joe D'Ambrosio,
he was finally able to make contact
with the murder victim's father, Richard.
Richard and I spoke on the phone,
and it was a long conversation.
By time we actually finished,
I was the last
person in the office.
Richard Klann gave Kuz a fuller portrait
of his son Tony
who along with his sister had been adopted.
They had been into foster
homes a couple of times.
And so we did everything
we could to help the kids
be comfortable and safe where we lived.
Growing up, a learning disability had
made things difficult for Tony.
Because of all the teasing
and the other things that
went on in his early life,
um, he didn't fit in real well.
Tony barely finished high school.
But in late August, 1988,
he told his dad he wanted to
start a lawn mowing business.
I was going to help him
with that. I was going
to help him get a truck.
Well, he never called me that weekend.
And I found out on Monday that he had
been killed on Friday.
It was the coldest day in my life.
As we covered all of this ground, he shared
something with me
that I had heard no one else mention.
He said that Tony Klann had told him,
Richard,
that he had witnessed a rape
in the apartment building where he lived.
I understood that there
was going to be a trial
and Tony was going
to be a witness for that.
After we hung up, I felt like I needed
to share that information with Neil.
Martin told me that. And I went down to
the Justice Center.
I pulled Anthony Klann's file.
And I discovered that he
indeed had witnessed a rape.
And that the rape victim was a young man
by the name of Christopher Longenecker.
- And you don't really hear about
male-on-male rape - all that often.
Uh, and to me that suggests
a whole another degree of violence.
But then it went a step further
because it was that the man
who had been arrested for the rape
was Stoney Lewis.
- The same Stoney Lewis
who had first tipped - off police
That Joe,
Keenan and Espinoza might be the ones
responsible for Tony's murder.
My heart just dropped
into the pit of my stomach.
And I'm thinking, "Oh, my God,
the deceased in this case
"has witnessed a rape."
And the rapist is the man
who is pointing his finger
at other men.
But if Neil was able to connect these two
cases in an afternoon,
why hadn't police and
prosecutors done the same?
The prosecutor of Joe's case was
Carmen Marino.
And it turned out that the
prosecutor of the rape case
was Carmen Marino.
At the same time.
So it doesn't take too
much to ask that you put
two and two together.
Yeah, I didn't, I didn't,
I didn't see any connection.
Who would murder him for what reason?
Contrary to what you may hear,
it's truly extraordinary
that someone would
murder another witness to
keep them from testifying.
But to Joe D'Ambrosio's defense team,
it seemed very connected.
Tony Klann was the only eyewitness
that was called by either side,
um, for that trial.
The only eyewitness suddenly ends up killed
and the case goes away.
To us, that was a far
better motive and opportunity
than what the prosecution had theorized.
In order to prove their theory,
Joe's team would need to interview
the alleged rape victim.
But Chris Longenecker
had vanished without a trace.
The new discoveries in Joe's
case caught the attention of
one of the most
prominent law firms in town,
Jones Day, which agreed to fight for Joe on
a pro bono basis.
It was like night and day.
It went from,
"I have two appeals left and then
they're going to murder me."
to,
"Now I have Neil and all these resources
from the world's third largest
law firm backing me up."
- Armed with the fact that prosecutor,
- Carmen Marino
Had withheld information,
Joe's team submitted
a sweeping discovery request
to the Federal District Court.
To me,
it just seemed like a logical question,
"What else is in there?"
Meanwhile,
the alleged rape victim, the only
person who could
corroborate what Tony Klann
had witnessed was finally
located living in Florida.
And it would be up to Neil
to convince him to testify.
Thirteen years after
Joe D'Ambrosio had been
sentenced to death,
Federal Judge Kathleen
O'Malley finally granted
Joe's defense team
access to all police and prosecutor files
related to his case.
They turned over a
stack of paper like a foot
and a half thick.
It was the first major judgment
to go Joe's way since he'd been convicted.
The way to get a new trial
was to show that a constitutional
violation had occurred.
In other words, the failure to
turn over exculpatory evidence,
evidence that tended to
prove that he was innocent,
would've mattered to a jury.
I took every page and I
went through line by line.
Some of the most compelling evidence
concerns Stoney Lewis,
including police reports
about suspicious activity
at Stoney's apartment
the morning Tony Klann was killed.
The lady that lived next door to Stoney
heard a loud violent argument
on, get this, Saturday morning.
She called the police.
They hid that from us.
There's witness statements
again in police and prosecutor files
that I think it was an older couple said
they heard someone say,
"Let's dump the body in the basement."
Joe and his lawyers believed that
at the very least
- the withheld evidence provided reasonable
doubt that the crime - could have happened
Differently than the
state presented at trial.
In July 2004,
Joe's team went before Judge O'Malley
to obtain a new trial.
We put up all our witnesses,
the newly discovered people,
the newly discovered evidence.
By far the most powerful
witness at the hearing
was Chris Longenecker,
Stoney Lewis's alleged rape victim,
who had been
found living in Florida.
Neil convinced Chris that his testimony
could save Joe's life.
I wasn't able to do
anything for Tony 'cause...
And so I figured,
if I could help someone else,
then I'll do that.
Chris, who is legally blind and was born
with a physical disability
on the left side of his
body was 22 years old
and Tony Klann's roommate back in 1988.
He told the court what happened one evening
when he was hanging around
with his downstairs neighbor,
Stoney Lewis.
We went back to his
place to hang out.
And decided to make something to eat,
I guess.
And he started pressing
up against me and crap.
And I was like, "Dude, what the hell
are you doing?"
I told him I wasn't into that.
And uh...
He was a little bit more threatening,
he started pulling
my hair and uh...
Some hands on stuff. And uh...
And so that happened and...
And there was some fair issues there from
the fact he had a firearm in his apartment.
And the whole time that
I was being assaulted,
I told him,
"This is not consensual, this is rape."
Chris says that just after the rape,
Tony Klann showed up at Stoney's apartment.
There was a knock at his door.
It was Tony Klann.
And then I left when Tony left.
'Cause I figured that was my way out.
I told him that Paul Lewis raped me.
And uh...
Sort of, freaked out a little bit.
And then I went to the police department
and filed a report.
Soon after,
Stoney was arrested and indicted for
reportedly raping Chris.
He spent a few weeks in jail
before being released on bond.
But when it was time for
Stoney's pretrial hearing,
Chris missed the court date.
And I misread and...
The court date or memorized a wrong date.
And uh...
so I called them,
and that's when they told
me that I was a day late,
and that Paul Lewis went free.
After Tony's murder,
Chris called the police
and mentioned the connection
to the earlier rape case.
I never accused Paul Lewis
of murdering Tony Klann.
I just told someone of authority that
all the people in both cases...
know one another.
But I guess they paid no attention to that.
When you hear Chris Longenecker
tell the story about what happened to him,
and who Paul Lewis really
is based on that event,
then you start to
imagine that this is a guy
who could've orchestrated
this type of crime.
Following the hearing,
Joe felt good about his chances
of getting a new trial.
But the decision would not come quickly.
Two years,
Judge O'Malley took two years to rule.
Finally, in March 2006,
the judge released her decision.
She overturned my case.
She granted me my retrial,
what I've wanted all along.
I wanted my day in court.
She said, "Look, no reasonable jury
would've convicted him
"if it had heard this evidence."
When that ruling
finally comes out,
I mean, such elation.
The combination of 15 years of pleading
and searching for the truth,
because Joe always said,
"The evidence will prove that
I didn't kill Anthony Klann."
Carmen Marino who retired in 2002 strongly
disagreed with the decision.
I'm disappointed. You got to understand,
it's disappointment from
the standpoint that those
cases were well tried.
In my considered opinion,
there is a very limited
trialability on many judges.
They don't understand
the full dynamics either of
investigating a criminal case
or trying a criminal trial.
Marino also disputed that
he withheld evidence.
We strictly followed the Ohio law.
If it was in my file,
they saw it or heard it.
- In addition to what the law required us
- to give them.
I gave them copies of everything that
they're entitled to.
Like Marino, the state of Ohio stood firm.
And of course, after she gave it to me,
they appealed it.
So I had my retrial,
but I couldn't go nowhere.
The prosecutor's office began preparing
for another trial.
Convinced they could
reconvict Joe and put him
to death once and for all.
By 2009, Joe D'Ambrosio's murder
conviction had been overturned
by a federal judge.
But since the state chose to retry him,
Joe still sat on death row, waiting.
The Cuyahoga County
Prosecutor's Office wanted
to preserve a conviction,
which is typical of many
prosecutor's offices.
No matter what evidence
you give them to the contrary,
they're going to do everything
to protect that conviction.
In February 2009, pretrial hearings began,
presided over by Judge Joan Synenberg.
By the time the case landed
in my courtroom,
someone had been sitting on death row
for over two decades.
This is very serious.
Because of mistakes that were made,
a process was flawed.
All I wanted to do was make sure that
the process was fair.
But just days before
the trial was to begin,
prosecutors disclosed
they had found additional
evidence in their files.
Despite having a Federal Court order,
in fact, there was physical evidence
that had not been turned over to Joe's
trial counsel.
Not only in 1988, but in this particular
proceeding itself.
It was a circus.
And I'm sitting out there
watching it in total disbelief.
Total disbelief.
The sudden release of new
evidence would delay Joe's
retrial even more.
So Joe's attorneys
petitioned the court for bail.
The state of Ohio said,
"It would be unheard of
"for a judge to let a man
off of death row on bond.",
And I said, "I agree."
He's not on death row,
he stands convicted of nothing
and based on what seemed
to be extensive community
support, I set a bail.
- Yeah.
Judge Synenberg lets him out of jail
on a $50,000 bond with a leg brace.
- That, to me, is the most appalling
thing anyone - could ever do.
Joe was released on house arrest.
- No comments.
- No comments.
Okay.
For the first time in 20 years,
Joe would go to sleep some place other than
an eight-by-ten jail cell.
Prison is always noise, 24/7.
Never silent.
Never dark.
For half my life.
So to sit in utter silence,
is amazing.
'Cause that's what I used to
do when I was at the house.
- I would turn off the lights and
sit in utter silence - for hours.
But there was still one more battle to go.
As Joe's retrial was
finally about to start,
news broke that Eddie Espinoza had
died of liver failure.
Espinoza had served only 12 years in prison
before being set free.
Despite losing their star witness,
the state asked the court
to admit into evidence
Espinoza's testimony from 1988.
I said, "No"
- because Mr. D'Ambrosio would not
have not had - his constitutional right
To confront someone who's not there.
I didn't see any reason
to permit testimony from
years ago in a process
that was already tainted.
The state pursued the
case for seven more months,
but without Espinoza's testimony, they had
little against Joe.
Finally, in March 2010,
Judge Synenberg dismissed all charges
and ordered that Joe be released
from house arrest.
Joe D'Ambrosio is free.
And should exonerate him.
Look at his record, it's gone.
And with that, case is over.
They can never put
me back in jail for this.
The original prosecution team was outraged
with the court's decision.
- You know, some things just
don't go the way - they ought to
In terms of equity and justice.
The case hasn't changed in 25 years,
it's not going to change.
They're the ones that
murdered this innocent guy.
It's the biggest smoke
screen I've ever seen in my life.
The judge is bought.
After his exoneration,
Joe went to work as a maintenance man
at Neil's parish,
the Church of St. Clarence
in North Olmsted, Ohio.
The state did absolutely
positively nothing for me
because I'm an exonoree.
I'm the sixth in Ohio history
and 148th in the United States
to be exonerated.
They do nothing for us.
Nothing at all.
They open the door,
they kick you out, "Get out."
Everything that I fought for,
for this country
was taken from me.
Every last single right,
for dang near 80 percent of my adult life.
Joe knows that he owes his freedom
and his life to one man.
If it wasn't for Neil,
I would've been murdered
10 years ago, easily,
and the state wouldn't have batted an eye.
It was just a matter of, I think,
common human decency,
and a matter of justice.
I was astonished...
at how far wrong the system can go.
And how slow it works.
And how much is at stake.
Joe and Neil travel
around Ohio speaking out
against the death penalty.
I started finding out that the things that
he was telling me
could be independently verified.
That I'm here is a blessing from God.
I prayed for him to end this nightmare.
I wanted it right then and there,
but he answered my prayers.
It just took 22 years, that's all.