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A packed courtroom in Elizabeth
watched as Union County Assistant Prosecutor Albert Cernadas Jr. asked Superior
Court Judge Stuart Peim to officially overturn all charges against Halsey, 46.
"The only evidence against Byron Halsey is his own confession," Cernadas said.
"The state at this time cannot meet its burden."
Peim agreed, and dismissed the charges, prompting Halsey to hug lawyers Barry
Scheck of the Innocence Project and Raymond Brown, a famed Newark attorney.
The trio then turned to the audience of about 100, who cheered the decision as
Halsey grinned.
"It feels different," he said to the crowd. "It's a lovely day to be
free."
Halsey turned to the judge who freed him and asked for his autograph. Peim
said his signature would be on the court order dismissing all charges.
Outside the courtroom, Halsey thanked prosecutors for "acknowledging the truth."
He also thanked God.
"I thank my Lord savior for carrying me through the years," he said.
Halsey's neighbor at the time, Clifton Hall, has been charged with murdering 7
and 8-year-old siblings Tina and Tyrone Urquhart, and sexually assaulting Tina,
the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
Tyrone was sexually assaulted and cut with scissors. Nails were drilled
into the boy's skull. Tina was raped and strangled and pummelled with a
brick. The children's mutilated bodies were found in the basement of their
Plainfield home that November 1985.
Halsey, who was a factory worker, spent 21 1/2 years in prison for the crime.
Halsey was cleared in May because of new DNA evidence after New York nonprofit
the Innocence Project took up his case. The Innocence Project convinced
Union County prosecutors to allow the new testing, which cleared Halsey and
implicated Hall, according to the statement from the prosecutor's office.
Prosecutors said the decision to dismiss the charges against Halsey came after a
careful reevaluation of the case, including re-interviewing witnesses and
re-examining evidence, including Halsey's confession to the crime, which was
later retracted.
Hall -- who testified against Halsey during the 1988 trial -- is now in prison
for raping two young women and attempting to rape a third woman in Plainfield in
the early 1990s. It was because of those convictions that Hall's DNA was
on file. In light of the new evidence, Hall, 49, was charged April 24 for
the murders of Tyrone and Tina Urquhart and the aggravated sexual assault of
Tina, according to the prosecutor's office.
Halsey is the 205th person nationwide and the fifth in New Jersey exonerated
through DNA evidence, according to the Innocence Project.
The 1988 jury found him guilty of felony murder instead of the more serious
first-degree murder, which would have allowed prosecutors to seek the death
penalty in a second trial phase. As it was, Halsey was sentenced to two
life terms plus 20 years in prison, with no possibility of parole for 70 years.
"By the grace of God, Byron Halsey is alive today to clear his name," Scheck
said in a statement. "He came within a hair's breadth of being sentenced
to die and ultimately being executed for a crime that DNA now proves he didn't
commit."
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