Hurt, 33, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 and sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 1995 robbery and shooting death of Fred Thomas Lester, a gas station attendant at Rich Oil in Bluefield.

Last week, after more than a decade of trials, appeals and hearings, Circuit Judge Joseph C. Pomponio Jr. overturned Hurt's conviction on the grounds of ineffective counsel and an unreliable witness.

"I fell out of the chair on the floor. It was just too much. I didn't know what to think," Hurt said of the moment the judge read his ruling, making him a free man.

"I've been dealing with this since I was 17. I grew up in prison. I never got the chance to go to a store, throw my ID on the counter and say, 'I want a beer,'" Hurt said in an interview with the Gazette-Mail this week.

"All of my 20s, gone.  . . .  I've never had the chance to experience the things that 21-year-olds, 22-year-olds do. I never got to do any of that. Never."

In 1995, police arrested Hurt in connection to Lester's slaying and robbery, after another juvenile admitted shooting Lester in the back of the head and named Hurt as an accomplice.

Hurt has maintained that he was talking to his pregnant girlfriend at about 3 a.m. on Aug. 21, 1995, the time of Lester's death.

At his first trial in Mercer County, jurors couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. They were 10-2 in favor of his acquittal.

His lawyer at the time asked for the next trial to be moved elsewhere because of the publicity it generated. The West Virginia Supreme Court agreed, and chose Pocahontas County.

Judge's reasons

Hurt is black, the murder victim was white, and he was convicted by an all-white jury in Pocahontas County. The county has a black population of less than 1 percent, and is the seat of the National Alliance, a white-supremacist group, according to the habeas petition filed for Hurt's release.

"The judge's order setting aside Davie's conviction, sets it aside on the basis of ineffective counsel," said Richard Holicker, Hurt's current lawyer with the Kanawha County Public Defender's Office.

"One of those reasons was his trial attorney was ineffective for not objecting to the transfer of the case to Pocahontas County," Holicker said.

Hurt's lawyer also failed to raise a number of issues involving jury selection, including whether anyone on the panel was a member of the National Alliance or a similar organization, according to the petition.

"I could never understand how my case got transferred to a place that has the largest white-supremacist group," Hurt said.

The judge who overturned Hurt's conviction last week said he also did so because the man who implicated him in the slaying and robbery was an unreliable witness.

Like Hurt, Michael Hopkins was 17 when he admitted to shooting Lester and named Hurt as an accomplice. Hopkins pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and, as part of his plea agreement, testified against Hurt in his two trials.

In 1999, though, Hopkins said Hurt had nothing to do with the crime. Hopkins signed two affidavits and wrote a letter to the judge who oversaw Hurt's second trial, admitting that he lied about Hurt's involvement.

In one of his recantations, Hopkins said police gave him Hurt's name, Holicker said.

The year before the robbery, Hurt and his family settled a lawsuit against the Bluefield Police Department that claimed police brutality toward Hurt and his cousin, who were 14 at the time, Holicker said.

The same police officers involved in the lawsuit also were involved in the investigation of the robbery and slaying of Lester, Holicker said.

Hopkins was released on probation in the early 2000s, after 10 years in prison.

During Hurt's hearing earlier this month, Hopkins again took the witness stand -- and again changed his story.

"Not only did he recant his recantations, but he claimed that he had never written letters saying that he lied when he pointed the finger at Davie," Holicker said.

"He said he'd never given an affidavit; he said that he'd never written a letter to the judge; and he said that he had never been in that courtroom before and he had never testified about this, all of which is in the record. "

That caused the judge to write in the order overturning Hurt's conviction that, "given the entirety of the record, Michael Hopkins is not a credible witness," Holicker said.

Remorse and guilt

Pocahontas County prosecutors have said they will appeal to the state Supreme Court the judge's ruling to overturn Hurt's conviction, Holicker said.

"If he wins the appeal, then Davie goes back to prison," Holicker said. "If the prosecutor loses the appeal, then he still has the right to try to retry [the whole case]."

For now, though, "I'm very happy, I can't explain. I mean, I got pants with pockets on." Hurt said earlier this week. "It's the little things that people in normal life take for granted, like petting dogs and turning door knobs and taking a bath in a tub full of water.

"I dreamed about it for years. I literally laid in a cell and just dreamed about leaning up against a tree."

His first stop after his release from the Mount Olive Correctional Complex in Fayette County was to Wendy's, where he ordered a No. 4 combo, his favorite number.

He's spent his first week out of prison with his family, helping with projects around the house and adjusting to his new life.

Hurt has a 15-year-old son. He said he's maintained a relationship with his son from behind bars, but mourns that he missed the teen's childhood.

He said he sank into a deep depression while in prison and, at one point, had to be committed to the facility's mental health unit.

"My thing was, I would rather be dead than be here under these circumstances," Hurt said. "If I were guilty, if I had killed someone, if I had any kind of charge, I would go to prison as a man, and step up and take responsibility. However, when you're wrongfully incarcerated, how do you comprehend that?

"I had it so bad at one point that I actually prayed to God and said, 'Look I just want to die. If you're real, don't wake me up in the morning. I don't have enough nerve to cut my own throat, so just don't wake me up in the morning.'

"The next morning when I woke up, I just cussed him out, just cussed God out completely. But since then, I believe now that everything that happens is a part of God's act of will, or his permissiveness.

"I believe that now, and I think that we all struggle and I think that some of the challenges that you are presented ultimately define who you are in some way."

Hurt's sentencing did not include a release date, and he would have become eligible for parole in 2013, after 15 years in prison. To make parole, though, a prisoner must admit to his crime and show remorse, Hurt said -- something he was never going to do.

"You can't have remorse if you don't have guilt," Hurt said. "I had actually told them when I was sentenced that I didn't have any remorse because, in order to have remorse, you have to have guilt.

"I know what the family has been through and what they are going to have to go through, but you can't have remorse if you don't have guilt."

Reach Veronica Nett at veroni...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-5113.