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A Virginia man\u2019s murder conviction has been vacated and he has been freed from prison after spending 25 years behind bars \u2014 including more than a decade on death row.<\/p>\n
Justin Michael Wolfe<\/a> \u2019s release on Monday marks the end of a complex legal saga that at one point had him just days away from an execution date for the 2001 murder of Daniel Petrole in Bristow, Virginia. Judge Carl Weimer vacated the conviction after the only witness tying Wolfe to the shooting recanted his testimony, and Wolfe agreed to a plea deal on marijuana and robbery charges for a sentence of time served. <\/p>\n Wolfe, 45, spent his first few hours of freedom in a whirlwind of normalcy: Eating pizza, running errands with his mom, planning a family dinner. <\/p>\n \u201cThe thing I relish most is getting to know my nieces and nephews,\u201d he said Tuesday afternoon. \u201cI did 25 years for a marijuana case, something that you can go buy at the store now. I feel like I handled it as well as I could.\u201d <\/p>\n Wolfe’s case drew widespread attention when it began in the early 2000s, exposing a then-shocking drug ring involving Wolfe and several other teens in northern Virginia. At the time, authorities said they estimated Wolfe and the others may have sold as much as $10 million worth of marijuana and the synthetic drug ecstasy before they were caught, using the money on high-dollar vacations to Hawaii and Atlantic City while maintaining a veneer of everyday suburban life.<\/p>\n Prosecutors said Wolfe hired another young marijuana dealer, Owen Barber, to shoot and kill Daniel Petrole on March 15, 2001. Petrole was Wolfe\u2019s friend from high school as well as his drug supplier, and prosecutors said Wolfe owed Petrole more than $60,000. <\/p>\n After the shooting, Barber told a friend what he had done and the friend notified police, according to court records. Barber eventually pleaded guilty as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty, and was sentenced to 60 years for the murder.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a grand jury indicted Wolfe on charges including capital murder. Wolfe testified in his own defense and denied any involvement in Petrole\u2019s death, but he was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to death.<\/p>\n The only person tying Wolfe to the murder-for-hire scheme was Barber. And Barber later recanted his trial testimony, saying Wolfe wasn\u2019t involved in the murder and that law enforcement officers had repeatedly threatened him with the death penalty unless he cooperated with Wolfe\u2019s prosecution.<\/p>\n Legal advocacy groups, including the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law and others took up Wolfe’s cause. But legal wins in the case were at times incremental, and each step took years. <\/p>\n After Wolfe appealed, a federal judge determined that prosecutors had engaged in misconduct and vacated his death sentence, ordering a new trial. But Barber refused to testify on Wolfe’s behalf because he feared it would violate the plea deal he had reached in his own case, potentially subjecting Barber to a new death penalty trial. <\/p>\n