USA - Florida. Derral Hodgkins walked out of prison today.

Derral Hodgkins walked out of prison today. Hodgkins, 56, is the beneficiary of a Florida Supreme Court decision in June that overturned his conviction for first-degree murder, finding that a jury had insufficient evidence to hold him responsible for the 2006 stabbing death of his former girlfriend. He will not have a new trial - he can't be prosecuted again for the same crime - nor will he spend a day on probation. To prosecutors' charging, Hodgkins is a free man. Convicted in 1988 of kidnapping and raping a 12-year-old girl in Hillsborough County, he spent 17 years in prison before his release on lifetime probation. In 2013, when he was placed on death row, a judge terminated that probation and sentenced him to prison time, assuming probation made little sense for a man sentenced to death. Although he was convicted of a violent sexual assault on a minor, Hodgkins is classified as a sexual offender, not a predator.