MILWAUKEE, Jan 31: A man sentenced to life in prison for killing a woman in 1984 had his conviction overturned and was released on Friday after spending 23 years behind bars.

Robert Lee Stinson, 44, of Milwaukee, walked out of the New Lisbon Correctional Institution in street clothes and hugged his sister and members of the Wisconsin Innocence Project. A judge vacated the sentence after the Project argued that bite-mark analysis and DNA evidence that didn’t match evidence from the crime scene, defence attorney Byron Lichstein said.

Stinson was convicted in 1985 of first-degree murder in the death of a 63-year-old Milwaukee woman. Evidence suggested she had been raped, and her body also had eight different bite marks, Lichstein said.

Stinson still faces a charge of first-degree homicide related to the woman’s death, Lichstein said. A status hearing is set for July 27, according to online court records. Stinson was released on a personal recognizance bond, meaning he must return to court.

At trial, two forensic odontologists testified that Stinson’s teeth were a match, even though Stinson was apparently missing a tooth in a place where the bite marks indicated a tooth, Lichstein said.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said in a statement on Friday that Stinson’s conviction was not wrongful, and that he was convicted based on “state-of-the-art scientific evidence available at the time of his trial”.

“The question today is whether there is newly discovered evidence in this case to warrant a new trial, and we agree that such evidence exists,” Chisholm said.

The statement did not specify the evidence.—AP