USA - Ohio. Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman walked free Friday morning after spending 39 years behind bars.

Ricky Jackson and Wiley Bridgeman walked free Friday morning after spending 39 years behind bars. All three sentences were commuted to life in 1978 after a Supreme Court ruling, but the men were still saddled with decades behind bars. Ronnie Bridgeman was released in 2003 for separate reasons. He was reunited with the other two inmates Friday when they walked free from Cuyahoga County Jail after prosecutors asked that the charges be dismissed. The dramatic turnaround came after Vernon, now 52, recanted his testimony, saying that police officers coerced him into testifying and gave him details of the case. He now claims detectives talked him into testifying, then said if he claimed he was lying his parents could be put in prison for perjury. Changing his account in 2013, he said: 'All the information was fed to me - I don't have any knowledge about what happened at the scene of the crime', Cleveland.com reported. A Cleveland judge, Richard McMonagle, on Wednesday had dropped all charges against Jackson, 57, and Bridgeman, 60, allowing for the pair's release. The Ohio Innocence Project, which took up the case, said Jackson had been the longest-held U.S. prisoner to be exonerated. Jackson was 19 when he was convicted along with Bridgeman and Bridgeman's brother, Ronnie, in the 1975 shooting death and robbery of Harold Franks. Testimony from a 13-year-old helped point to Jackson as the triggerman and led a jury to convict all 3. But that witness recanted his testimony last year, saying he was coerced by detectives, according to court documents. A story published in Scene Magazine in 2011 first raised new questions about the murder and whether Jackson and the Bridgeman brothers actually committed the crime. Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in court Tuesday that without an eyewitness there was not much of a case. "The state is conceding the obvious," he said, according to Reuters. Ronnie Bridgeman, now known as Kwame Ajamu, was paroled from prison in 2003. Jackson was originally sentenced to death but that sentence was vacated because of a paperwork error. The Bridgeman brothers remained on death row until Ohio declared the death penalty unconstitutional in 1978. "One of them came within 20 days of execution before Ohio ruled the death penalty unconstitutional" said Mark Godsey, director of the Ohio Innocence Project.