DNA frees woman after 30 years locked up for murder

RENO, Nev. Prosecutors are dropping the case against a Nevada woman who spent more than 30 years in prison for a 1976 murder before a judge ordered a new trial based on recently discovered DNA evidence, the district attorney said Friday.

Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks told reporters that there will be no retrial of Cathy Woods in the fatal stabbing of Michelle Mitchell on the edge of the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno.

A judge threw out the conviction in September after new DNA evidence linked the Reno crime scene to an Oregon inmate who now faces murder charges in California in a string of killings about the same time.

Washoe District Judge Patrick Flanagan ordered the 64-year-old Woods to appear at a retrial July 13. But Hicks said during a news conference at the county court complex that hes filing a motion to dismiss the case.

Woods public defender and the FBI say DNA found on a cigarette butt at the Reno crime scene suggests the real killer is a former Oregon prison inmate recently charged in the deaths of two women among five victims in what became known as the Gypsy Hill murders near San Francisco about the same time Mitchells throat was slashed.

Woods, now 64, was convicted in 1980 and again five years later. The convictions were based largely on the confession she made in 1979 at the psychiatric hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana, where her mother committed her months earlier.

Prosecutors at those trials argued that only Mitchells killer could have known the information Woods provided to police in her confession.

The Nevada Supreme Court overturned the initial conviction based partly on the trial judges refusal to allow defense attorneys to present evidence that Woods could have learned everything she told investigators from newspaper accounts.

Nevertheless, Woods lawyers were unable to persuade the jury in the second trial to disregard her earlier confession, public defender Maizie Pusich said.

Its very hard to argue (that) you shouldnt believe her, because, why would someone confess to something like that? Pusich said before Judge Patrick Flanagan granted her motion in September for a new trial.

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DNA frees woman after 30 years locked up for murder