DURHAM, N.C. _ Judge Orlando Hudson on Wednesday once again vacated the murder convictions against Darryl Anthony Howard.
Hudson's ruling came after he found that new DNA evidence found in one of the victims belonging to another man raised questions about Howard's guilt. Hudson ordered Howard to be released from prison, and he was freed from the Durham County Detention Facility shortly after 3 p.m. Eastern time.
After talking briefly with two of his attorneys, Seema Saifee and Barry Scheck of the N.Y.-based Innocence Project, about the bank of reporters awaiting him outside, Howard stepped gingerly toward the wife, Nannie Howard, who married him several years after he was convicted.
They have never been able to hug without her making an appointment first with prison officials and embraced so tightly that they both fell against the jailhouse wall.
"I want to go see my grandchildren, go see my mom and go home," Howard said.
Howard, 54, was convicted in 1995 of two counts of second-degree murder for the homicides of Doris Washington, 29, and her 13-year-old daughter, Nishonda, at a Durham public housing complex. The killings occurred in 1991 in what investigators described as revenge for a drug deal gone bad.
That conviction was overturned by Hudson in May 2014, then reinstated by the state Court of Appeals this past April after the three-judge appellate panel found procedural problems with how the jury verdict was vacated.
The mother and daughter were found naked and dead on a bed in 1991 inside a burned apartment at a Durham public housing project where Howard, then 32, was a frequent visitor. Attorneys argued this week about whether the mother and daughter were sexually assaulted.
Though Durham police collected evidence for rape kits shortly after the bodies were discovered, then Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, the lead prosecutor on the case, argued at the 1995 trial that police had not considered the two to be sexual assault victims.
In raising questions about his case, Howard's attorneys brought forward forensic experts this week who contend a sexual assault, indeed, took place.
Howard's DNA was not found at the crime scene. At the 1995 trial, prosecutors relied on witnesses who told police they had seen him at the apartment that day.
The case won the backing of the Innocence Project, a national organization dedicated to exonerating the wrongfully convicted through DNA testing. Tests done by the Innocence Project five years ago pointed to a different culprit _ a convicted felon with a history of assaulting women who was a member of the New York Boys, a gang known for trafficking drugs in Durham during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Prosecutor Stormy Ellis immediately announced plans to appeal Hudson's decision, then said later that the Durham District Attorney's Office had decided not to appeal.
