From the Chicago Tribune :

More than a quarter-century after they were sent to prison for one of the most sensational crimes of the 1970s, two Chicago men walked free into the arms of tearful relatives and a dramatically different world Friday after prosecutors agreed they should have a new trial.

Citing DNA tests that excluded Michael Evans and Paul Terry in the 1976 rape and murder of 9-year-old Lisa Cabassa, Cook County prosecutors dropped their opposition to a new trial, though they plan to try the two men again.

....Evans and Terry were sentenced to 200 to 400 years in prison for the abduction, rape and murder of Lisa on Jan. 14, 1976. The girl was abducted as she walked near her home in the South Chicago neighborhood. Her body was found the next day.

At the time, Evans and Terry were 17.

If prosecutors do not try Evans and Terry or if the two men are acquitted, the case would be the oldest DNA exoneration in the nation, said Rob Warden of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. Winning a conviction would seem difficult in the face of the DNA evidence and the numerous contradictions in Januszewski's testimony, lawyers for the men said.

Evans also called on prosecutors to drop the case. "They know they were wrong," he said. "They need to let it go."