Alan Gell, 28, who spent a decade behind bars in the...

Alan Gell, 28, who spent a decade behind bars in the 1995 murder of Allen Ray Jenkins, has been set free after a Bertie County jury's not-guilty verdict. The jury reached its verdict after less than 3 hours of deliberation. Jurors said there wasn't a single member of the panel inclined to convict Gell. Mr. Gell was convicted of murder in 1998 after prosecutors withheld evidence that supported his claim of innocence, though a judge had told them to give all evidence to defense attorneys. Jenkins' body was found on April 14, 1995. Prosecutors built a case against Gell based on the testimony of 2 teenagers, Crystal Morris and Shanna Hall, Gell's former girlfriend, who testified that they saw Gell pull the trigger and kill Jenkins during a robbery on April 3, 1995. But prosecutors in Gell's original trial withheld from defense lawyers a secretly taped phone call in which Morris, who was then 15 years old, did not answer when her boyfriend asked her twice whether Gell killed Jenkins. She also told her boyfriend she had to "make up a story" about Jenkins' death. Also withheld by prosecutors were statements from more than a dozen witnesses who said they saw Jenkins alive after April 3. Gell was either out of state or in jail on a car-theft charge from April 4 until after Jenkins' body was found April 14. During the retrial, 3 scientific experts testified that Jenkins' body and the scene of his killing were not consistent with the prosecution's argument that he was killed 11 days prior. Investigators found no physical evidence such as hair, blood, fingerprints or fibers linking Gell to Jenkins' death. Police found the shotgun and other items in July 1995 after Morris and Hall told them where they had been hidden. Both Hall and Morris reached plea bargains with prosecutors in which they promised to testify truthfully in return for being allowed to plead guilty to 2nd-degree murder and receive sentences of nearly 10 years in prison. Mr. Gell's attorneys learned of this evidence 2 years after his conviction, when the attorney general's office gave them its file on the case, as required by law. When they took the evidence to a judge, he, in December 2002, threw out the conviction and ordered a new trial.