Inmate Leaves Prison After DNA Evidence Leads to Dropping of Charges

[MountainLaurel]

21 years?! :cry:

At 5:15 yesterday afternoon, a thick glass door swung open at Jessup Correctional Institution, a state prison in Anne Arundel County. Under sunny skies, out walked James L. Owens, an inmate who had been serving a life sentence for murder.

Owens, 43, slung a bag over his right shoulder and clutched an envelope in his left hand. He climbed into the back of a minivan and for the first time in more than 20 years rode away a free man.

"You can't give me that time back," he told reporters gathered outside the prison. "You can't give me that back. That's all I got to say."

Hours earlier, in Circuit Court in Baltimore, prosecutors dropped murder and burglary charges against Owens, acknowledging that they lacked sufficient evidence to prosecute him at a new trial. A judge ordered the trial last year after DNA tests on evidence collected from the body of Colleen Williar, a neighbor of Owens's, excluded him and another man who was convicted in her death.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/15/AR2008101501805.html