USA - California. District Attorney's office has dropped capital charges against Douglas Stankewitz

The Fresno County District Attorney's office has dropped capital charges against Douglas Stankewitz, California's longest serving death-row prisoner, citing mitigating evidence that had never been presented to the juries in his two prior trials. Stankiewitz, who maintains that he is innocent, was convicted and sentenced to death for the Feb. 8, 1978 kidnapping and murder of Ms. Theresa Greybeal, 22. The California Supreme Court granted him a new trial in the 1980s and he was again convicted and sentenced to death. A California federal district court overturned his death sentence in 2009 and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that ruling in 2012.