After a very slow-moving legal challenge, a federal judge on Wednesday overturned a murder conviction for a man charged with shooting a drug dealer in 1989. The former convict, William Lopez, filed a habeas corpus petition in 2002, which eventually led to Wednesday’s decision. In his ruling, Judge Nicholas Garaufis called the original jury’s decision “bewildering,” seeing as how there was no physical evidence tying Lopez to the crime and one of the eye witnesses had been smoking crack all day before the crime and later admitted she lied. The other witness couldn’t identify Lopez in court.
