Alan Gell of North Carolina became the nation’s 113th exonerated death row inmate today, February 18, 2004. Gell, who has maintained his innocence since his 1998 conviction, was acquitted of all charges by a jury that deliberated for only two and a half hours at his retrial. In December 2002, a North Carolina judge vacated Gell’s murder conviction and ordered a new trial after ruling that prosecutors withheld important evidence that might have helped exonerate Gell at his first trial. Among the evidence not revealed was a secretly taped 1995 telephone conversation in which the prosecution’s star witness said she “had to make up a story” about the murder. The state also withheld numerous witness statements that said they saw the victim alive after the only time Gell could have committed the murder, and forensic experts have corroborated the time of death with these statements. Assistant Attorney General Steven Bryant admitted that the state should have turned over the exculpatory evidence, and the state decided not to seek the death penalty in Gell’s second trial. Gell is the first death row exoneree freed in 2004, and the fourth exoneree from North Carolina. Gell’s exoneration comes just weeks before the North Carolina House of Representatives is scheduled to take an historic vote that could halt executions in this closely-watched Southern state. Read DPIC’s Press Release. See Innocence.