Michael Sutton (left) and Kenny Phillips.

In 2007, Cleveland residents Michael Sutton and Kenny Phillips were convicted on multiple counts of attempted murder stemming from a drive-by shooting. The two were sentenced to more than 130 years in prison combined. Nearly 15 years later, however, their convictions would be overturned and both men would be found not guilty in a 2022 retrial.

Conflicting police testimony and prosecutors' failure to disclose evidence are at the heart of the case, and the two have filed a lawsuit against three Cleveland police officers and the Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Office.

Incarceration upended the lives of Sutton and Phillips, both of whom were teenagers at the time of their arrests. For weeks in 2023, I spent time with both men as they navigated life for the first time in a year without the case looming over them. Read more about their case as part of an investigative project from Ideastream Public Media, Columbia Journalism Investigations and NPR.