WA: this week's news from Yakima

From the Yakima Herald - Republic:

Rape conviction overturned

In a first for the state of Washington, DNA testing not available 10 years ago convinced a Yakima County judge Wednesday to overturn a 1996 rape conviction... The ruling by Superior Court Judge Robert Hackett drew loud gasps from supporters of Ted Bradford, 33, who served nine years in prison...

Bradford's conviction was the first in Washington that was overturned solely on the basis of new DNA evidence, according to one of his lawyers, University of Washington law professor Jackie McMurtrie, who leads the Innocence Northwest Project in Seattle.

"Thank goodness for advances in science," she said. A few feet away, Bradford huddled with friends and family...

Convicted killer will be re-charged

The man convicted of killing Yakima community activist Toni Gardner 10 years ago is back in court. A decade ago, Robert Eugene Langford pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for the stabbing death of Gardner...

Langford's case, however, is the latest and probably the last of 15 Yakima County murder cases invalidated as a result of a controversial 2002 state Supreme Court ruling... Prosecutors have until Sept. 29 to arraign Langford on a new charge. The paperwork was already filled out by day's end: first-degree murder.

That's the same charge Langford originally faced for Gardner's death. Instead, he pleaded guilty to a variation of second-degree murder known as felony murder. It was that very variation... that the Supreme Court tossed out in 2002. (In) Andress v. State of Washington, the court reasoned that assault without proof of intent to kill was too similar to manslaughter and could not serve as the basis for a felony murder conviction...

Known simply as Andress, the dual rulings jeopardized roughly 300 felony murder convictions statewide...