Christopher Ochoa, 34, was ordered released by state District Judge Bob Perkins, who said the case was “a fundamental miscarriage of justice.” Ochoa was serving a life sentence.

“I had given up on the system,” Ochoa said after embracing his weeping mother. “We have to fix it because I came close to losing my life.”

Ochoa, 34, confessed to killing Nancy DePriest at a Pizza Hut in Austin in 1988, but later said he was coerced by homicide detectives.

At his request, students in the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studied the case and found DNA evidence they said proved someone else shot DePriest. The second- and third-year law students investigate possible wrongful convictions.

Authorities said the new evidence points to Achim Joseph Marino, a Texas inmate who confessed to DePriest's rape and murder in 1996 after a religious conversion and provided police with the gun and handcuffs he used to commit the crime.

Marino, who is serving three life sentences for other crimes, also provided mouth swabbings carrying his DNA, which was matched by the law students to evidence taken from DePriest's body.

Prosecutor Bryan Case admitted Ochoa was wrongly convicted.