DRAPER, Utah (AP) — A Utah woman has been freed from prison after 17 years and is celebrating a belated Mother’s Day with her family after being declared “factually innocent” in a 1993 murder.
Fifty-three-year-old Debra Brown is the first inmate exonerated under a 2008 Utah law allowing judges to reconsider convictions based on new factual — not scientific — evidence.
Brown’s exit from the Utah State Prison touched off an emotional reunion in the pouring rain.
Though she couldn’t pedal a powder-blue bicycle out of prison as she dreamed, the coaster was waiting with family and friends outside the prison gates.
