The wind blew Friday afternoon outside the South Central Regional Jail. The flag above whipped back and forth, clanging loudly, as Jimmie Gardner walked out of the building.
"I'm just so humbled right now," Gardner said after taking a few steps away from the jail Friday.
He had been incarcerated for the past 27 years.
A week ago, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin overturned Gardner's 1990 conviction on sexual assault and burglary charges. Goodwin ruled that Gardner's trial had been tainted by false testimony from then-West Virginia State Police serologist Fred Zain, whose discredited work resulted in millions of dollars paid to wrongfully convicted defendants.
Goodwin ordered that Gardner either be retried or set free within 60 days.
Earlier Friday, Kanawha prosecutors said during a hearing that they will retry Gardner. There is enough evidence -even without Zain's testimony - to again convict Gardner of the 1987 rape of a Kanawha City woman and the beating of her elderly mother, prosecutors said.
Kanawha Circuit Judge Joanna Tabit set the new trial for May 16. She then set a $10,000 bail, which Gardner's family was allowed to pay 10 percent of for his release. He will await trial at his mother's home in Albany, Georgia.
Gardner's brother, Erik, 39, of Atlanta, stood up after the hearing, wiping tears from his eyes. He called his brother his hero and thanked Goodwin, and then he thanked Tabit, for setting bail.
The courtroom was packed Friday with Gardner's family and friends and lawyers who have represented him over the years.
The assault Gardner was convicted of occurred around 7 a.m. on May 16, 1987, as two women - both of whom have since died - were preparing to have coffee on their patio. The mother was beaten, the daughter was sexually assaulted. About $90 and a cassette player were taken.
Gardner is from Tampa, Florida, and was a pitcher for the Charleston Wheelers, the city's minor league baseball team at the time.
In 1990, jurors convicted him of first-degree sexual assault, aggravated robbery, assault during the commission of a felony and breaking and entering in connection with the assault on the woman and her 82-year-old mother.
Zain, the disgraced State Police serologist, served as a critical expert witness for the prosecution in Gardner's trial and provided incorrect testimony that Gardner could not be excluded as the perpetrator, Goodwin wrote.
"The parties now stipulate, however, that Zain's lab reports did exclude Gardner" as the perpetrator, the federal judge's order states.
Zain was awaiting trial on fraud charges when he died of cancer in 2002 at age 52.
The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled in 1994 that all prisoners whose cases Zain testified in during his 12 years as a State Police serologist could ask for new trials - if they first submitted to new DNA tests. That included Gardner, who was sentenced to 33 to 110 years in prison by Kanawha Circuit Judge Paul Zakaib.
But Zakaib said Gardner would have been convicted regardless of Zain's testimony, and turned down his request for a new trial.
Since then, the Supreme Court ordered at least three times - in 1995, 2002 and 2005 - that Gardner be granted a full evidentiary hearing in Kanawha Circuit Court. But those hearings "seem to have never materialized," Goodwin wrote.
In 1996, after originally denying the request, Zakaib granted Gardner's motion for a new, post-conviction DNA test. Those tests showed that the semen found inside the victim belonged to Gardner.
"As a matter of fact, they determined, statistically, that there is a one in 13,500,000 percent chance that someone else would have had that DNA profile of the semen collected from inside [the victim]," First Assistant Kanawha Prosecutor Don Morris said in court Friday.
There's other evidence, too, Morris told Tabit.
A bloody fingerprint found on a vase at the crime scene is a match to Gardner, Morris said. And Gardner had never been in the women's home until the day of the attack, one of the women testified at trial, according to Morris.
One of the attorneys representing Gardner, Robert Dunlap of Beckley, said evidence would be thoroughly reviewed, especially in light of the case's history.
The tale told in Goodwin's order "reads like a John Grisham novel - and not one of the good ones," Dunlap said. "Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. We're going to have to dig into this deeply in a very short period of time."
But Gardner is prepared for the fight, he said Friday. He knew this day would come.
"I've got my momma with me. I've been fighting for this for so long," he said, squeezing his mother close to him. "I don't have no animosity, no hatred, no anger. I give all praise to God. This is all God's doing."
Gladys Gardner, 71, said she hadn't slept or eaten in three days. She's been praying non-stop for her son, that he would get to come home.
"Let's go, I'm hungry," she whispered while Gardner talked to reporters after his release.
Gardner said he will spend the next few weeks preparing with his lawyers for trial.
"This hasn't been as taxing on me as people might think because I've kept my faith," Gardner said. "I've met so many good West Virginia people. I don't want people to think West Virginia's a bad place or I got a raw deal in West Virginia. It was a bad situation, but I came out of it.
"I don't have animosity, anger," Gardner said. "I'm healthy at 50, and I'm blessed."
Reach Kate White at kate.white@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-1723 or follow @KateLWhite on Twitter.