— Prosecutors have dismissed a murder charge against a Wilson man who spent more than 40 years in prison in the case.

A federal appeals court ruled in January that Charles Ray Finch was denied a fair trial because of a flawed lineup law enforcement used to obtain an eyewitness identification of Finch as the suspected killer.

Finch, now 81 and in failing health, was released from Greene Correctional Institution in Maury last month.

"I have been waiting on this day all my life," Finch's daughter, Katherine Jones-Bailey, said at the time. "Miracles happen every day, and today is our day."

Finch was convicted and sentenced to death in 1976 for the killing of Richard Holloman during an attempted robbery of a Wilson grocery store. The North Carolina Supreme Court vacated the death sentence the following year after the U.S. Supreme Court declared the state's mandatory death penalty unconstitutional, and he was resentenced to life in prison.

Prosecutors wrote on the dismissal form that retrying the case four decades later would be "impractical/impossible due to witnesses being deceased, retired and/or relocated."

Finch maintained his innocence through the years, and Duke University’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic began looking at his case in the early 2000s, digging up evidence to support his innocence claim.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found significant problems with the evidence used to convict Finch. The court said, for example, that he was subjected to "suggestive lineups" because he was the only person wearing a jacket similar to one a witness to the shooting said the gunman was wearing.

A review of the autopsy determined Holloman had been shot with a pistol, not a shotgun as the witness stated, and new ballistics evidence contradicted prosecution claims that shells found at the crime scene matched a shotgun shell found in Finch’s car. Other witnesses also indicated they had been pressured by investigators into providing testimony implicating Finch.