A Marion County judge on Thursday signed a certificate of innocence for Frank Gable, who was released from prison in 2019 after more than 29 years in custody.
A federal magistrate judge in 2019 threw out Gable’s murder conviction in the 1989 killing of Oregon Corrections Director Michael Francke. In 1991, Gable had been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The federal judge found that no reasonable juror would have convicted Gable in light of another man’s multiple confessions to Francke’s fatal stabbing and because nearly all the witnesses in the case had recanted their testimony since the trial. The decision was upheld by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals…