FAIRBORN, Ohio — Dean Gillispie, of Fairborn, turned trash into modern art during his 20 years behind bars for crimes he did not commit.
Dean Gillispie said he was just out of high school, working at a factory in the Dayton area when he was charged with armed robbery, kidnapping and rape.
“Had a lot of animosity between me and the guy who run that plant, and 4 other plants in Dayton. He didn’t like me. He just started taking my information down to the police department that he used to work at to try to get rid of me,” he said.
Gillispie went to trial, was convicted, and spent 20 years in prison for crimes he claimed he didn’t commit.
During his time in prison, he said he was stripped of his individuality and had to prove himself through the use of violence. In order to maintain his sanity, he began making dioramas out of trash he found around the prison.
“In the prison, they take everything from you that you possibly have in freedom. But they can’t take your creativity from you,” Gillispie said.
Gillispie said his mom never stopped fighting to clear his name.
“My mom was out fighting like crazy, knocking on every door,” he said.
In 2003, the Ohio Innocence Project was founded. Gillispie was their very first case.
“Dean’s mom drove down and found me before we even opened our doors. It was in the paper that we were getting ready to open an innocence project. She brought a box of files and videotapes and all kinds of things and basically said ‘You have to look at this because my son’s innocent,’” said Mark Godsey, Director and Co-Founder of the Ohio Innocence Project.
Godsey said he and his team conducted an in-depth investigation throughout the next four years. In 2007, they filed for Gillispie’s release, and days before Christmas in 2011, Gillispie walked out the prison doors on bond after being granted a new trial. In 2017, he was officially exonerated when the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed his case.
Gillispie said his 20 years in prison destroyed what should have been the best years of his life.
“I turned 25 years old in the county jail. I didn’t get out of prison until I was 45. That’s the best years of your life,” he said. “You’re figuring out what you’re gonna do in life, you get your career set up, start figuring out if you’re gonna have a family. You start, you know, getting your house, all these things that, you know, you do in life.”
Art was his connection to the outside world.
“So I put my music on, sit there, and start doing my art, and I was gone. Mentally, I was out of that institution, floating around in this building I was building or in one of my paintings I was painting. My mind was not in that prison,” Gillispie said.
He said, at first, the guards would confiscate his pieces, so he created an art club. In that club, he was able to create the completed dioramas he is known for today. He said his mother would come to pick them up whenever he finished in order to keep them safe.
Many of his pieces still have a place in her home, though five of them sit in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
More than five years after his release, he was officially exonerated when the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed the case. Between his release and exoneration, Gillispie filed a civil lawsuit against Miami Township Police and former detective Scott Moore for their work in the case.
In November 2022, the jury sided in Gillispie’s favor and granted him $45 million. Gillispie said, however, that no amount of money will ever be enough to fix the damage caused.
“It’s never enough money, but what happened was it let the world know that these wrongful convictions are not acceptable. You can’t destroy someone’s life just because of personal or political gain. You can’t continue to do these types of things,” Gillispie said.
