On its own, the letter could not be offered as new evidence because of its lack of detail, Atkins' lawyers say. Powell had vanished. "Everybody knew that if we couldn't find Denise, there was no case," says Wendy Koen, one of the main investigators.

Koen, a second year law student at Cal Western, spent months tracking down Powell before learning that she had been arrested on drug charges.

When Koen interviewed Powell one month later at a drug treatment facility, Powell said she had fabricated the story about Atkins' confession because she wanted the long police interrogation to end. "The information just poured out of her," Koen says of the videotaped interview.

Powell confirmed her account in a September 2006 court hearing before the same judge who presided at Atkins' original trial. The judge ultimately threw out his conviction, and Atkins was set free Feb. 9, 2007.

"When you think about how things came together," Koen says, "it's a miracle."

Actually, it's a miracle when a judge believes a recantation. Judges typically think (somewhat irrationally) that the first story must be the true one and deny motions for a new trial on that basis. Unless there is good reason to think that the recantation is unreliable (evidence of bribery, for instance), the course of action most consistent with a faith in juries is to order the new trial and to let a jury decide whether the original story or the recantion is true.

For Koen, who finished law school and works as a lawyer for the California Innocence Project, Atkins' case is an inspiration.

And Wendy Koen should be an inspiration to everyone who cares about freeing the innocent.