A man convicted in a 1998 murder case and sentenced to life without parole has been released from prison after being exonerated with help from the Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders law firm and the Georgia Innocence Project (GIP).

Devonia Inman was convicted of robbing and killing Donna Brown, the night manager at the Taco Bell in Adel, a southwest Georgia town near Moultrie, as she locked up the restaurant after midnight on Sept. 19, 1998, according to the GIP’s website. Along with $1,700 in cash, her car was stolen and later found abandoned with a distinctive homemade ski mask inside.