Ohio Bus Driver Cleared of Abuse in 2022 Still Fighting Prosecutors Trying to Undo It

A Lorain, Ohio bus driver who spent 15 years in prison for a child sex abuse case built on no physical evidence is still fighting to keep her freedom secure, more than four years after a judge threw out her conviction. Nancy Smith was exonerated on February 25, 2022, in Elyria, but Lorain County prosecutors have spent the years since trying to reverse that outcome, and some defendants named in her federal damages lawsuit filed a notice this month appealing her exoneration to the Ohio Supreme Court.

The case against Smith began in 1993, when she was arrested on allegations of child sex abuse tied to her work as a Head Start bus driver, a job she had started in Lorain in 1990, according to The New York Times. Children interviewed by police gave jumbled sexual-abuse stories and eventually identified at least six houses as alleged abuse locations, per the same report. Investigators also found there was no bus aide named Joseph, even though Joseph Allen, a co-worker with a prior child-molesting conviction, was swept into the case and arrested alongside Smith.

A jury found Smith guilty on all counts on August 4, 1994, following a nine-day trial in a Lorain County courtroom. Judge Lynett McGough sentenced Smith to 30 to 90 years in prison, while Allen received five consecutive life terms, the Times reports. Bus records showed no lateness, mileage discrepancies or suspicious absences during the period covered by the allegations, and a medical examination found no signs of abuse — evidence that never swayed the original verdict.

A Community Rallies, Then a Decades-Long Legal Maze

Smith's family sold about 100 spaghetti-supper tickets for $12 each, and the fundraiser drew nearly 600 people, according to the Times. The Ohio Innocence Project, founded in 2003 at the University of Cincinnati College of Law, accepted Smith as one of its first clients that same year. The organization has since helped free 42 wrongfully convicted people across Ohio who collectively spent over 800 years in prison combined, according to the University of Cincinnati.

Smith's path out of prison was anything but straight. Judge James Burge entered a judgment of acquittal and set her bond at $100,000, but the Ohio Supreme Court later ordered Smith and Allen returned to prison on jurisdictional grounds, according to the Times. In 2013, Smith accepted a deal reducing her charges to gross sexual imposition and her sentence to time served — a resettlement sometimes described in post-conviction advocacy circles as a “dark plea” — while continuing to maintain her innocence, per the University of Cincinnati. Two Ohio governors declined to grant her a pardon during this period, and Smith was ultimately released in February 2009 after 15 years behind bars, choosing at that time to forgo any attempt to challenge the outcome or seek compensation, the Times reports.

Allen, meanwhile, received a reduced sentence of 10 years at one point in the case's tangled history but ultimately spent 23 years incarcerated before his release in late 2021, according to the Chronicle Telegram. Four children involved in the original allegations had already received $1.5 million each in a related Head Start settlement back in 2003, per the Times.

Exoneration, Apology, and a New Prosecutor's Reversal

The turning point came on February 25, 2022, when a judge vacated Smith and Allen's convictions in Elyria. Then-Lorain County Prosecutor J.D. Tomlinson, who had been elected to the post in 2020, apologized to both Smith and Allen and supported the exoneration, believing Smith had been wrongfully imprisoned and deserved compensation, the Times reports. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost had Tomlinson's own statements later stricken from the record amid the ensuing legal fights.

Tomlinson's successor, Tony Cillo, has taken a starkly different position. In November 2025, Cillo filed a 300-page motion in Common Pleas Court alleging that Tomlinson and former Judge James Burge committed “wide-ranging fraud” during the 2022 exoneration proceedings, arguing the dismissal was a political arrangement rather than a merit-based acquittal, according to the Chronicle Telegram's report. Cillo has called the exoneration a fraud and a conspiracy to acquit and pay Smith, and former assistant prosecutor Jonathan Rosenbaum has separately argued against her exoneration and said Tomlinson should have been disqualified from the case.

Those efforts have repeatedly failed in court. A trial court rejected attempts to block Smith's exoneration, an appeals court did the same, and on May 20, 2026, Ohio's Ninth District Court of Appeals rejected Cillo's appeal outright, affirming visiting Judge Janet Burnside's ruling that left the 2022 exonerations intact, the Chronicle Telegram reported. Despite that string of losses, some defendants named in Smith's federal lawsuit filed a notice this month appealing her exoneration to the Ohio Supreme Court, keeping the underlying criminal case alive in a separate legal track even as her civil suit moves forward.

A Federal Lawsuit and the Question of Compensation

Smith's clearest remaining path to financial accountability runs through federal court. In February 2024, she filed a civil rights lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio against the City of Lorain, Lorain County, Rosenbaum, and several police officers, alleging a conspiracy to fabricate evidence and wrongfully convict her, according to court filings referenced by Justia Dockets. The suit remains active.

Smith's exoneration also opened the door to seeking compensation from the state, and the Times reports Ohio law provides at least $1 million in compensation for her. Under Ohio Revised Code § 2743.48, individuals formally declared wrongfully imprisoned by a Court of Common Pleas can petition the Ohio Court of Claims for statutory payouts typically ranging from $40,000 to $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration, plus lost wages and legal expenses, according to Triscaro & Associates. Smith currently receives $494 per month in Social Security, the Times reports, and has said she simply wants her legal ordeal to end.

Smith's case is not an isolated one. Data from the National Registry of Exonerations, reported by WYSO, shows that perjury or false accusations contributed to roughly 55 percent of documented U.S. wrongful convictions since 1989, with the daycare sex abuse panics of the 1980s and 1990s producing dozens of similar cases. The Times notes that sex-abuse hysteria cases nationwide have resulted in more than 60 exonerations across 13 states. Smith's story has also drawn cultural attention beyond the courtroom — a new opera about the case premiered in Cincinnati in 2019, according to the Times, and a June 2009 Ohio Senate reform bill expanding DNA access, mandating double-blind photo lineups, and requiring recorded interrogations was championed in part by the Innocence Project following high-profile cases like hers.