| On September 20, 2019, Cleveland police officers Allen Gera and Nicole Corea were on patrol near East 79th Street and Lockyear Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio, when they heard gunshots. They saw a man, who was on the sidewalk westbound on Lockyear Avenue, holding a gun in his right hand.
The officers later testified that they saw the man put the weapon into the back of his pants and walk behind a house. As they pulled up their squad car and stopped, the man, 38-year-old Jamille Massingill, emerged from the back of the house. The officers drew their weapons and stopped him. After they patted him down and found nothing illegal, Massingill took them to the backyard where he showed them a Glock nine-millimeter handgun on the ground. The clip had been removed and a single bullet was next to the gun. The gun was empty.
Massingill told the officers that he had been at a friend’s house and was walking home when someone approached him with a gun. The man told him to “lay it all down,” meaning it was a robbery. Massingill said he wrestled the gun away from the robber, and it discharged during the struggle. The man then fled. Massingill said he took the gun, disarmed it, and put it on the ground behind the house because he didn’t want children to find it.
Massingill was arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon and attempted tampering with evidence.
In January 2020, he went to trial in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas. The officers testified and described how they heard the gunshots, saw Massingill holding the weapon, and how he led them to it in the backyard.
Massingill testified that after taking the gun away from the man who tried to rob him, he unloaded it behind the house so “if someone found it, a kid or child or someone found it, that they would not be able to us it to harm theirself [sic].”
He also testified that he did not want to approach the police with a gun in his hand.
“I’m a Black male,” Massingill testified. “Neighborhood I live in is dangerous. Officer or law see someone with a weapon, first thing they might do is shoot. And it’s a lot of innocent people that’s been shot by officers and killed for no reason, and I did not want to be one of those persons.”
On January 27, 2020, the jury convicted Massingill of carrying a concealed weapon and attempted tampering with evidence. He remained free on bond until February 12, 2020, when he was sentenced to two years in prison.
On August 5, 2021, the Eighth Appellate District Court of Appeals vacated the convictions and ordered the charges dismissed.
The court noted that Ohio allows for open carry of handguns. “Massingill was walking and openly carrying a firearm, which is legally permitted in this state,” the ruling said. There was insufficient evidence of the “essential element of concealment.”
In vacating the attempted tampering conviction, the court declared, “It is not hard to imagine why Massingill, a Black man, would not feel comfortable approaching police while carrying a handgun, even though he is legally allowed to openly carry a firearm in the state of Ohio.”
On August 6, 2021, Massingill was released from prison.
On September 22, 2021, after the prosecution announced it would not seek leave to appeal the ruling, the charges were dismissed.
Massingill subsequently filed a lawsuit seeking to be declared a wrongfully imprisoned person, which is required when seeking compensation in the state of Ohio. On June 22, 2023, a judge ruled that Massingill was a wrongly imprisoned person.
He subsequently was awarded $170,000 in compensation from the state of Ohio, of which $68,998 was for attorney’s fees.
– Maurice Possley
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