AUSTIN — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned the 1998 murder conviction of a Tarrant County man whose case spurred the state to pass a major criminal justice overhaul.

"He praised God," John Nolley Jr.'s lawyer, Nina Morrison with the Innocence Project, told The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday. "He said he looked up at the sky and just took a big breath."

Nolley, 44, was sentenced to life in prison after a jailhouse informant lied on the stand, testifying that Nolley admitted to stabbing Bedford resident Sharon McLane to death in 1996. The snitch — who later gave false testimony in another murder case — claimed he'd never been an informant and hadn't been promised anything for taking the stand, both lies Nolley's lawyers didn't learn until after their client was sent to prison for life.

Now, two decades after his trial, the state's top criminal court on Wednesday agreed to overturn Nolley's murder conviction.

"There was no apparent motive, there was no physical evidence connecting him to the crime, there were no eyewitnesses, there was no confession," Morrison said. "Everyone had agreed that John had not gotten a fair trial."

The criminal court upheld a lower court's ruling that lapses in justice, including the informant's "false testimony," undermined confidence in the outcome of the trial and led to Nolley's conviction.

The Tarrant County district attorney's office will now decide whether to dismiss the original indictment and grant Nolley innocence. If it does, he will be eligible to get compensation for his 19 years behind bars. The investigation into who killed McLane, meanwhile, is ongoing.

Nolley has been out on bond awaiting this ruling since the lower court overturned his conviction two years ago. Since then, Morrison said, he's gotten married to an old friend from middle school and had a baby, John Nolley III.

1 / 4John Nolley Jr. with his son in a recent photograph. Nolley's conviction in the 1998 slaying of Bedford resident Sharon McLane was overturned on May 9, 2018. He's been out on bond since the trial court originally overturned the conviction two years ago. In that time, Nolley married and had his son, John Nolley III.(Nolley family) 2 / 4John Nolley Jr. with his son and wife, Kim, in a recent photograph. Nolley's conviction in the 1998 slaying of Bedford resident Sharon McLane was overturned on May 9, 2018. He's been out on bond since the trial court originally overturned the conviction two years ago. In that time, Nolley married Kim and had his son, John Nolley, III.(Courtesy of the Nolley family) 3 / 4John Nolley (center, facing camera) was embraced by his brother LaMarcus Nolley and sister Mia Nolley after he was released from prison in 2016.(Paul Moseley / The Associated Press ) 4 / 4John Nolley smiled as he left the courtroom after his release from custody in May 2016. Nolley, who had been incarcerated for almost 19 years, was freed after his murder conviction was overturned due to new evidence. (File Photo/The Associated Press)

In that time, Texas also passed the toughest anti-snitch law in the nation. The law, which went into effect in September, requires prosecutors to track their use of informants and provide more information on these relationships to defense attorneys.

The law was modeled after the conviction integrity unit established by the Tarrant County district attorney's office a few years ago. After hearing about potential miscarriages of justice in Nolley's case, the unit worked with local police to take another look, launching a investigation into the evidence — or lack thereof — that put Nolley behind bars.

The probe led the county to change its jailhouse informants policy, which laid the groundwork for the new statewide snitch law. Nolley's was the first case taken up by the conviction integrity unit and the first to yield an overturned conviction.

"The Nolley case is a clear example of how, by addressing individual cases, conviction integrity units can institute real reform and best practices for future cases," District Attorney Sharen Wilson told The News. "The collaborative partnership on this case between our office, the Bedford Police Department and the Innocence Project demonstrates a single-minded commitment to what should be at the heart of every conviction integrity unit: discovering the truth."