Judge Releases Wrongfully Convicted Man

Jul 6, 12:24 PM (ET)By BETH FOUHY

NEW YORK (AP) - A judge signed an order Thursday freeing a man who has spent more than two decades in prison after being wrongfully convicted of brutally raping a woman.

Judge John Byrne signed the order in Bronx Criminal Court while Alan Newton, 44, stood quietly with his attorney. His family whooped loudly in the crowded courtroom when he first appeared, dressed in a beige suit with a bright blue shirt.

After his courtroom appearance, Newton had to await paperwork that would let him to walk out of the courthouse as a free man.

The nonprofit Innocence Project and prosecutors from the Bronx district attorney's office had asked for Newton's 1985 conviction to be vacated based on recent testing on a rape kit used for the woman.

Newton was convicted of raping the 25-year-old woman in an abandoned Bronx building in 1984 and was sentenced to up to 40 years in prison.

In 1994 he filed a motion asking that new DNA testing be conducted, but the request was denied because the evidence was unavailable, the Innocence Project and prosecutors wrote in court papers.

A similar request was granted four years later, but testing of the victim's clothing "failed to yield the presence of male DNA," the papers said.

At the request of the Innocence Project, the Bronx district attorney's office last year asked the New York Police Department's property clerk division to search for the rape kit at an evidence warehouse in Queens.

The result "conclusively excludes" Newton as the assailant, according to the papers.

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