Judge vacates Virginia man’s murder conviction; he walks free after 25 years

A Virginia man’s murder conviction has been vacated and he has been freed from prison after spending 25 years behind bars — including more than a decade on death row. Justin Michael Wolfe ’s release on Monday marks the end of a complex legal saga that at one point had him just days away from an execution date for the 2001 murder of Daniel Petrole in Bristow, Virginia. Judge Carl Weimer vacated the conviction after the only witness tying Wolfe to the shooting recanted his testimony, and Wolfe agreed to a plea deal on marijuana and robbery charges for a sentence of time served.

Wolfe, 45, spent his first few hours of freedom in a whirlwind of normalcy: Eating pizza, running errands with his mom, planning a family dinner. “The thing I relish most is getting to know my nieces and nephews,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “I did 25 years for a marijuana case, something that you can go buy at the store now.

I feel like I handled it as well as I could.” Wolfe was 19 when the case began Wolfe’s case drew widespread attention when it began in the early 2000s, exposing a then-shocking drug ring involving Wolfe and several other teens in northern Virginia. At the time, authorities said they estimated Wolfe and the others may have sold as much as $10 million worth of marijuana and the synthetic drug ecstasy before they were caught, using the money on high-dollar vacations to Hawaii and Atlantic City while maintaining a veneer of everyday suburban life. Prosecutors said Wolfe hired another young marijuana dealer, Owen Barber, to shoot and kill Daniel Petrole on March 15, 2001.

Petrole was Wolfe’s friend from high school as well as his drug supplier, and prosecutors said Wolfe owed Petrole more than $60,000. After the shooting, Barber told a friend what he had done and the friend notified police, according to court records. Barber eventually pleaded guilty as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty, and was sentenced to 60 years for the murder.

Advocacy groups took up Wolfe’s case Meanwhile, a grand jury indicted Wolfe on charges including capital murder. Wolfe testified in his own defense and denied any involvement in Petrole’s death, but he was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to death. The only person tying Wolfe to the murder-for-hire scheme was Barber.

And Barber later recanted his trial testimony, saying Wolfe wasn’t involved in the murder and that law enforcement offi…