The Gate Is Opened After Twenty Years.

A women lied and a man spent twenty years in prison as a result.
On Friday the same judge that sentenced Timothy Atkins set
him free. It is some what frightening to wonder how many more
Timothy Atkins sit in prisons under the same circumstances.
Check out the article below.




A lifelong heavy drug user, frequently homeless or in jail, Denise Powell was a hard person to track down.Researchers for the California Innocence Project spent months searching for Powell — who was only in intermittent contact with her own family. Their goal was to finally document on the record what Powell had been openly admitting for years:

Her testimony implicating Timothy Atkins for murder was false.When researcher Wendy Koen finally found Powell in early 2005, in rehab after a recent arrest, she confessed without hesitation."She was ready to talk. She'd been wanting to talk for years," Koen said. "She said, 'I was young and stupid. I didn't know it would come to this. I lied.' "Thus began the final step in Atkins' 20-year campaign to prove his innocence.

On Friday morning, Atkins, now 39, walked out of Los Angeles County Jail and into the arms of his family, free for the first time since his teens."It's over. I made it," he said, as weeping, whooping relatives lined up to embrace him. "I don't think the realization hit me until late last night."In light of Powell's recanted testimony, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan overturned Atkins' conviction Thursday and ordered his immediate release.

Tynan was the trial judge in 1987 when Atkins was convicted of second-degree murder and two counts of robbery and sentenced to 32 years in prison.In his ruling freeing Atkins, Tynan recalled that Powell's testimony was "the key to the conviction in this case…. The state has no interest in upholding a conviction obtained by false testimony."On Friday, Atkins still looked a little shellshocked as he was swarmed by dozens of ecstatic family members and the beaming legal team from the California Innocence Project, part of the California Western School of Law in San Diego.

"This is the pinnacle of our existence," said project director Justin Brooks. "This is the whole goal: freeing the innocent."Back at his cousin Tanya Franklin's house in South Los Angeles, Atkins dispensed hugs and fielded congratulatory phone calls. After decades of incarceration, he spent most of his time outside on the front lawn.Franklin asked, "You want to come inside?""No," he answered, "I want air."Atkins' conviction stemmed from a New Year's Day 1985 carjacking attempt in which flower shop owner Vincente Gonzales was killed.



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