ATLANTA AP – After proclaiming his innocence from prison for nearly 22 years, a man who has been cleared of a rape conviction by DNA evidence walked out of the Fulton County Jail as a free man Tuesday night.

Willie O. “Pete” Williams has spent nearly half his life in a Georgia prison. He was convicted of aggravated sodomy, kidnapping and rape when the victim identified him as the perpetrator in the April 1985 incident.