COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio prison inmate Carlos Ridley, four decades into a life sentence for a triple slaying, was awaiting a court ruling this month he hoped would help him prove innocence through DNA testing.
On Monday, an Ohio appeals court rejected Ridley’s request. The next day, he was rushed to a hospital where he died of COVID-19, according to his two daughters.
His last message to them, a few days earlier: “This has been very hard two weeks I feel as if I’ve aged at lease 10 years.” Ohio has the country’s highest per-prisoner COVID-19 case rate and the fifth-highest prisoner death rate, according to an analysis of state prison cases by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom dedicated to the U.S.