Updated on June 26, 2019 to include the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal's decision to grant George Powell a new trial.

George Powell, who was sentenced to 28 years for armed robbery a decade ago, has been granted a retrial after a top court found that his due process rights were violated.

Powell, 46, has maintained his innocence in the 2008 7-Eleven robbery and has spent years fighting for his release. His attorneys have argued Powell's conviction hinged on junk science and that prosecutors withheld information key to his case. They made their case for a retrial in the Bell County court in January 2018 and have been waiting for the past 18 months for the courts to make a decision.

Powell's case will be featured in a upcoming Netflix documentary on questionable forensic science techniques.

In February, Judge John Gauntt recommended that Powell get a retrial because prosecutors withheld key evidence that could have affected the outcome. On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed, formally vacating Powell's conviction and creating a path for him to make his case yet again.

Mike Ware of the Innocence Project of Texas, whose attorneys worked on Powell's case, called the court's opinion "wonderful" but said Bell County District Attorney's misconduct should force him to he step aside from the case.

"If they have any ethics at all, and I'm not sure that they do, they need to recuse themselves," Ware said.

Powell's conviction hinged on questionable analysis of video surveillance footage of the robbery. His attorneys have said that their client, who is 6-3, is much taller than the robber in the video and that he was convicted based on a faulty method of measuring height in the moving image.

In February, Powell's fiancee said she hoped he'd be released in the meantime. But Powell remains on lockdown at the Alfred Hughes Unit in Gatesville, Ware said, which means Powell is not yet aware of Wednesday's ruling granting him a new trial.

"I am feeling elated thinking that they could release him on bail while waiting for a new trial," Parsons told The Dallas Morning News in a Facebook message. "I can't wait to tell George! He doesn't know yet!"