35 years served without conviction, man gets new trial

BAY CITY, Texas (AP) — For more than 35 years, a Texas man has been in a prison even though an appeals court threw out his conviction on a 1976 murder charge that initially had him on death row.

On Monday, 59-year-old Jerry Hartfield will return to court for a retrial, facing a life sentence if convicted of killing a woman who sold tickets at a Bay City bus station.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers have haggled over who's to blame for decades of inaction and whether Hartfield's right to a speedy trial have been violated. But the trial judge has refused to dismiss Hartfield's indictment and prosecutors recently took the death penalty off the table, citing a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barring execution of mentally impaired people.