(WWJ) -- A man who maintained his innocence for more than three decades is a free man after nearly 32 years in prison.
The Oakland County conviction of Gilbert Lee Poole, Jr. has been vacated after collaboration between the Michigan Department of Attorney General's Conviction Integrity Unit and the Western Michigan University Law School Innocence Project.
Poole was wrongly convicted of murder in 1989 after the stabbing death of Robert Mejia on June 7, 1988. DNA evidence from the scene exonerates him after just under 32 years in prison.
Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Rae Lee Chabot set aside the conviction Wednesday morning during a hearing held via Zoom.
Mejia's body was found stabbed to death in Pontiac on June 7, 1988 after being stabbed to death. He was last seen at a Pontiac bar and several people provided a description of a man seen leaving the bar with Mejia.
Despite composite drawings running in a local newspaper, no leads developed.
But that November, officials say Poole's then-girlfriend implicated him in the murder, eventually leading to his arrest and ultimate conviction.
During the trial an expert testified that Poole's teeth matched the bite mark found on Mejia's body, but in the years following Poole's conviction, bite mark analysis has been wholly discredited and rejected by the scientific and legal communities as unreliable.
Similarly, in the decades since Poole's conviction, officials say there have been significant advancements in DNA testing.
"If we only knew then what we know now, Mr. Poole never would have spent the past three decades in prison for a murder he did not commit," Attorney General Dana Nessel said.
Nessel says this is the first exoneration for her office's newly formed CIU.
As a 22-year-old, Poole says he couldn't understand how he was convicted.
"I stomped my feet and kicked and screamed and said, 'this is not right,'" Poole said. "It wasn't until I surrendered to a higher power and God stepped in and sent me a band of angels and looked to see who was standing here in the furnace. I was standing here in the furnace and I didn't belong here."
The Innocence Project at WMU's Cooley Law School took up Poole's case in 2015 and DNA testing from the bite mark helped overturn his conviction.
"I didn't understand what was happening back in 1988 when I went to court to be tried for a murder I didn't commit," Poole said. "I had a lawyer sitting beside me telling me, 'don't worry about it. It's not you," until the jury announced the verdict. I said, 'what does that mean?' and he said, "that's unfortunate,' as he disappeared into the crowd."
