After an unwarranted stint of 44 years within the confinements of a prison cell for a murder he insists he didn't commit, 77-year-old Philadelphia resident William Franklin has at long last been released and reunited with his eagerly awaiting family, casting a stark light on the potential miscarriage of justice, as reported by FOX 29 Philadelphia.

The gates of freedom swung open for Franklin following Judge Tracy Brandeis-Roman of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas ruling to vacate his conviction and grant a new trial on February 28, and despite the fact that the murder charge lingers over his head the emotional reunion has sparked a beacon of hope for his family who say they never relinquished their faith, as "I trust God but to see it, that's a whole other level," Franklin's daughter, Lisa Justice, enlightened NBC10 in an interview.

Franklin, who found himself an innocent man in captivity since 1980, the grave injustice anchored in alleged misidentification by jailhouse snitches, seems to have been swallowed by a system more hungry for convictions than truth, misguidedly spending most of his lost years at SCI Phoenix in Montgomery County, as his family clung to each other and to hope outside the prison walls.

The District Attorney of Philadelphia, Larry Krasner, is now saddled with the weighty task of determining whether to re-prosecute Franklin or to abandon the charges entirely with the official decision impending at a hearing scheduled for Thursday, Franklin, in the meantime, has been relegated to house arrest, as reported by Audacy’s KYW Newsradio.

The overarching narrative of William Franklin's case puts a human face to the often abstract and distant concept of wrongful convictions, his newfound liberty arriving too late to reclaim the decades of his life lost to a cell, while an ineffable strength resonates through his family's unwavering conviction to see justice prevail in the end.