Three men lost decades of their lives--and one died in prison an innocent man

Miss. judge frees 2 men wrongly jailed 30 years

A judge on Thursday freed two men who spent three decades in prison before DNA evidence showed they didn't rape a woman and cut her throat in a grisly 1979 attack.

A crowded courtroom erupted in applause after Forrest County Circuit Judge Robert Helfrich's ruled to set aside the men's guilty pleas, ending what some described as a 30-year ordeal for the imprisoned men.

One of the men had been released for medical reasons last month. He has lung cancer and a brain tumor. A third man jailed for the crime died in prison in 2002.

The only witness to the murder, the victim's then 4-year-old son, has always maintained that there was one attacker. DNA evidence not only absolved the man, it matched someone who is already imprisoned for a rape in 1981.