CINCINNATI — A man who spent 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit has been sharing lessons he learned with students across Ohio.
The school group called M.O.R.E - Men, Organized, Respectful and Educated - arranged for Laurese Glover to speak to students and parents at Chase Elementary School Thursday night. Glover told WCPO it’s important to raise awareness about his injustice so the next generation can learn from what he’s been through.
“At each step I always kept thinking, ‘OK, the adult court will get it right. We got a better chance than the juvenile court,’ and then we got convicted,” Glover said before the event. “Then I thought, ‘OK, the appeals court is going to get it right.’”
For Glover and his two friends known as The East Cleveland 3, that didn’t happen. After being convicted of murder in 1995, their appeals were unsuccessful for years.
“You just keep giving yourself the sense of hope and faith that the next stage is going to get it right, and then they don’t,” Glover said.
Their conviction was centered around a single eyewitness testimony, which a young woman later recanted. The Cleveland 3 eventually got their convictions overturned and case dropped with the help of the Ohio Innocence Project.
“I wouldn’t want to see what happened to me happen to my own worst enemy,” Glover said.
Rodger Horton, M.O.R.E. Coordinator at Chase, said Glover’s story would teach the young men in the group about important social issues.
“The time that we live in, there are many social injustices occurring,” Horton said. “Some of them happen in silence or some of them happen in the blind. So becoming more aware, allowing people to speak up and speak out about it.”
For Glover, telling his story to young kids is crucial.
“They're next up. Next up to be our police officers, our prosecutors, our judges and different things like that. If they’re aware what’s going on, they can make that difference,” Glover said.
Another part of Glover’s message to the kids is to be aware of these realities and do their best to stay on the right path.
