Freed inmate rejoices

Willie Earl Green looked dazed. He walked slowly.

Before him were streets he could stroll freely for the first time since he was young. Behind him were the last of the lockups that had caged him since 1983, for a murder he insists he did not commit.

"It's like I'm in a dream," said Green, 56, moments after he stepped into the sunlight outside the downtown Criminal Courts Building, where a judge ordered him released Thursday. The witness whose testimony had sent Green away for 33 years to life recanted, and prosecutors decided not to retry him.

Now, after a quarter-century behind bars, there were all these wonders for Green to behold: cellphones, remote car locks, a hug from his wife that would not be cut short by a prison guard. He sobbed as they embraced at the Kyoto Grand Hotel, around the corner from the courthouse, his first stop on the way to their Chowchilla, Calif., home. "It's all right, baby," his wife, Mary, said. "Everything's all right. . . . It's time to start living."

Her husband said he half-expected a guard to tap him on the shoulder, the routine at San Quentin State Prison. "That's what I'm waiting for," he said, "for them to come and tell me now, 'One hug, one kiss, you're over.' "

There was another person to hug Thursday -- Susan Breyer, the forewoman of the jury that found him guilty. "I'm thrilled," said Breyer, who had come to believe in Green's innocence. "I, they, took 24 years of his life."

And Green remarked on all the hugs he could have given -- to his father before he died in 1999, and to Mary before she underwent surgery for breast cancer last year. "I never asked for mercy," Green said. "I only asked for justice. . . . They can't hurt me no more. I'm free."

It was a day of firsts for Green. He drank his first cup of Starbucks coffee. He took it with cream and sugar -- two treats forbidden in state prison. His wife told Green that she would teach him to use her newfangled coffee maker and washing machine when they got home.

The soft-spoken Mississippi native was convicted of fatally shooting a woman at a South Los Angeles crack house. The sole witness, Willie Finley, had placed him at the murder scene, but Green and his lawyers said Finley had lied.

Four years ago, Finley told the lawyers that he had been high on crack the night of the killing and had not gotten a good look at the shooter. He said detectives helped him identify Green.