ANGOLA, La. — Behind the gray, forbidding walls of the Louisiana State Penitentiary here, Gary Tyler's 16-year-old dream lies undiminished: to be freed of a murder he says he never committed, a murder that put him on Death Row despite what many legal experts believe was a deeply flawed criminal investigation and trial.

In a racially tinged case that has sharply divided public opinion, Tyler's fate depends on Gov. Buddy Roemer, a conservative Republican facing a bruising reelection fight this fall.

Jonathan Turley, an assistant professor of law at George Washington University in Washington, calls the Tyler case "a sort of microcosm of all of the problems we're seeing across the country in criminal law today."

"It's tragic in the sense that this story brings out the worst in our prison crisis, our system of jurisprudence, and even our political system," Turley said. "Across the board, everyone in this story comes out looking bad."

BACKGROUND: In 1974, in the small petrochemical-producing town of Destrehan, La., Tyler was a student at the recently integrated Destrehan High School. He was bused in from a predominantly black neighborhood and says he faced daily taunts from white students.

One late December afternoon, the racial tensions seemed so explosive that the high school was closed several hours early. A mob of angry white students gathered near the school's parking lot, pelting the bus Tyler rode with stones.

Suddenly, a shot rang out, and 13-year-old Timothy Weber, a white student, fell dead. Minutes later, police officers entered the bus and arrested Tyler. A gun was found on the seat next to him. At his subsequent trial, four black teen-agers testified against him, and one, Natalie Blanks, said she saw Tyler point the gun through the window of the bus at the white crowd outside.

An all-white jury convicted Tyler of first-degree murder, making him, at 16, the youngest person on Death Row in the United States.

Tyler was just months away from Louisiana's electric chair when the case against him began to crumble. First, Blanks recanted her testimony, saying it had been coerced. Then, the three other witnesses, who had described Tyler's propensity for violence, also recanted, saying deputies in Destrehan had scared them into giving their testimony.