MONTPELIER, Vt.A state law passed in 2008 that allows people convicted of crimes to try to be exonerated based on DNA evidence appears headed for its first test. <\/p>\n
John Grega, a Long Island man convicted in 1995 of killing his wife, Christine, while on vacation in Vermont, was released from prison Wednesday, a day after a judge vacated his sentence and ordered a new trial because DNA from an unknown man was found on her body. He was released on $75,000 bail. <\/p>\n
The case marks the first time a court in Vermont has even entertained -- never mind granted -- a request that a felony conviction be overturned based on new DNA evidence. <\/p>\n
Grega's lawyers said Thursday that the Vermont Innocence Protection Act doesn't spell out the procedures that take place when new DNA evidence raises questions about a conviction and the defendant is granted a new trial. <\/p>\n
\"There are some basic procedural questions that need to be answered. They probably need to be discussed with the court,\" lawyer Ian Carleton said. <\/p>\n
Gretchen Bennett, executive director of the Boston-based New England Innocence Project, which works on such cases around the six-state region, said DNA evidence has resulted in numerous prisoners being freed, as well as the person who actually did a crime then being charged and convicted. <\/p>\n
Bennett said the Grega case was the first to her knowledge in which the state had pushed for a new trial. When new DNA evidence points to someone other than the person convicted, \"it's generally considered to be pretty conclusive,\" she said. <\/p>\n
Prosecutors had accused John Grega of raping, sodomizing, beating and strangling his 31-year-old wife in 1994 and leaving her body in a whirlpool bathtub at the West Cover condominium where they were staying on vacation with their then-2-year-old son. He had been found guilty of aggravated murder. <\/p>\n
Grega, a former Lake Grove, N.Y., resident, walked out of the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield and into the arms of family and friends late Wednesday afternoon. <\/p>\n
A month earlier, Carleton and the Vermont defender general's office had filed a motion in court saying new analysis showed that skin cells taken from inside Christine Grega's rectum belonged not to her husband but to another unknown man. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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