Delaware County Common Pleas Judge William R

Delaware County Common Pleas Judge William R. Toal Jr. ordered a new trial for Nicholas Yarris, 42. Toal vacated Yarris' convictions and sentences in 1982 for 1st-degree murder, rape, robbery and kidnapping in the December, 1981, killing of Linda May Craig, 32. On Aug. 26 Yarris' attorneys and the District Attorney's office had jointly requested the removal of the convictions and sentence as the result of DNA test results in July on 3 pieces of crime-scene evidence that cleared Yarris. Such evidence and DNA technology weren't available at the time of Yarris' 1982 trial.