The advert that freed Sean Hodgson

A man who spent 27 years in jail for a murder he did not commit finally had his conviction overturned today after DNA tests destroyed the prosecution case against him.

But even as Sean Hodgson, a frail 57-year-old, celebrated his freedom on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice, it emerged that the DNA tests which freed him should have been carried out 11 years ago.

Mr Hodgson was found guilty in 1982 of killing Teresa De Simone, 22, who had been found strangled in her Ford Escort three years earlier in a car park below the Southampton pub where she was a part-time barmaid.

He had long pleaded his innocence after retracting a confession initially given to a Roman Catholic prison chaplain – one of hundreds of crimes to which he confessed because, as he told his original trial, he was a "pathological liar" – and lost an appeal in 1983,

Last March, after many years of mental health problems, he decided to mount one final bid for freedom and contacted a London solicitors firm whose advert he saw in a prison newspaper. That firm managed to organise the DNA tests which proved his innocence.

With close-cropped hair and sunken cheeks , Mr Hodgson was in the Court of Appeal today to court today to hear the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Judge, and two other senior judges rule that his conviction was "unsafe" and should be quashed.

Afterwards, supported physically by his brother Peter, he emerged blinking into the early spring sunshine as journalists and television reporters crowded the steps of the court.

"How do you feel, Mr Hodgson?" one shouted.

"Ecstatic," he replied. "It's great to be free again."

Had he ever expected this day to come? "No," came the reply, without hesitation.

Mr Hodgson's case was urgently referred to the court last week by the Criminal Cases Review Commission after DNA tests – not yet developed at the time of the 1982 trial – proved that he was not the killer. The commission wants dozens of other murder cases reviewed in light of the findings.

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