Man Found Innocent After Spending 40 Years In Jail For Murder

A California man convicted of a double homicide in 1978 was pardoned after nearly 40 years behind bars.
California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Wednesday that Craig Richard Coley would immediately be freed from state prison in Lancaster after new DNA tests indicated he was likely not the murderer in the decades old case.
The 70-year-old had been serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for the murders of his ex-girlfriend, Rhonda Wicht, and her 4-year-old son, Donald
The 24-year-old mother was found strangled with a rope in her apartment in Simi Valley on Nov. 11, 1978. Donald had been suffocated.
Coley, who had just broken up with Wicht, was arrested the next day, with his first trial ending in a 10-2 hung jury. A second jury in 1980 found him guilty and handed him his life sentence, but Coley maintained his innocence throughout the four decades he spent behind bars.