Best friends, Cordell Hubbard and Ruel Sailor were small-time dealers on the east side of Cleveland.

On November 16, 2002, Cordell's sister Nicole was out partying with some friends.

She fronted the group, 20 bucks for drugs, but felt taken advantage of when she only got $10 back from the group of five.

When she spoke up, a gun was pulled on her, so she called Cordell.

While celebrating a birthday at a bar with a large group, including Will Seismore and Ruel,

Cordell answered the call from Nicole and took Seismore along to confront the two men who had done her wrong,

Omar Clark and Clark Lamar Williams.

They pulled up on these men on a darkened street and Seismore initially got out of the passenger side and confronted them about his sister,

leading with a sister believe that the passenger was Cordell.

Cordell got out of the driver's side, Omar Clark pulled a gun, and Cordell shot him in self-defense,

while the other men, Williams, got caught with a bullet in his buttocks as he ran away.

Ruel was clearly not involved, but his tight friendship with Cordell and his days in the streets would come back to Hauntum.

A corrupt vice detective who had once vowed to get Ruel would use this opportunity, claiming an informant had told him

that Ruel was the other man with Cordell, while threatening and coercing Ruel's alibi witnesses into silence.

Even with Cordell taking full responsibility and naming Will Seismore as the other man for sentencing,

Ruel still spent 15 years behind bars.

This is wrongful conviction with Jason Flom.

Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flom, that's me, I'm your host, and today, if I was going to title this episode,

I would call it Web of Lies, because this case was built on so many different layers of lies,

so many different people had to tell in order to convict an innocent man named Ruel Seller of murder and other charges.

So, we'll get right into it.

First of all, I want to introduce the woman who was responsible for Ruel winning his freedom a couple years ago.

...