America's longest serving exoneree put his left arm around his attorney's shoulder in a Detroit courtroom Tuesday. She softly pat his 71-year-old hand.

"We are done," attorney Gabi Silver told Richard D. Phillips, who served 45-plus years in prison for a murder he didn't commit. "We are finally done."

Wayne Circuit Judge Kevin Cox, moments before, dismissed charges of first-degree murder and conspiracy against Phillips for the 1971 killing of Gregory Harris, a crime for which Phillips was framed decades ago.

"You have clearly been a very dignified gentleman in this courtroom," Cox told Phillips. "I think you are a man of integrity and dignity based on my observation.

"I wish you nothing but the best in the future. I hope that other people can benefit from your situation and your story."

Cox said Phillips has seen "the worst and the best of the criminal justice system."

Before the hearing, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy held a press conference at which she said her office would no longer pursue another trial, as it had previously planned.

While Worthy has agreed not to prosecute overturned cases in the past, she has seldom admitted the original conviction was a mistake.

"The system failed him, there's no question about it in this case" Worthy said Tuesday. " ... I wish him well, but that sounds so hollow, when think about ... more than half of his life that he spent in prison."

Prosecutor statement on exoneration:

Cox last year agreed to give Phillips a new trial, based in part on statements made by Phillips' co-defendant at a parole hearing, that Phillips wasn't involved in the 1971 murder.

A gray-haired, good-humored and grandfatherly Phillips emerged from the Wayne County Jail after being released on bond with a GPS tether pending a new trial in December.

"I didn't expect it," Phillips said before his hearing Tuesday, his hair now colored black and wearing a blue-tinted suite with shiny dress shoes. "I expected to probably to just, you know, just say, sayonara to a lot of you all going to the graveyard in Cherry Hill, but that's not going to happen now."

Cherry Hills cemetery is a Michigan Department of Corrections-owned property in Jackson that is often the burial place for indigent prisoners who die in custody.

Phillips says he's spent the last several months of semi-freedom making frequent trips to the Secretary of State's office as he's attempted to obtain ID and a driver's license.

"I'm trying to get my life back in order, trying to find some kind of financial stability," said Phillips, who claims he's already been offered a book deal. " ... When you get out, basically you're just thrown pretty much out there in the street and told you're on your own."

Phillips may be eligible to received nearly $2.25 million, $50,000 for each year he spent wrongly imprisoned, based on the 2016 Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act.

Phillips insist he bares "no animosity" toward the system for the decades of wrongful imprisonment.

"If you have a rotten heart before, you're going to have a rotten heart after," Phillips said. "My heart has never been rotten."

After his 1972 conviction was overturned, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office offered to release Phillips on time served without a new trial if he agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder.

He turned it down.

"I would rather die in prison, than to admit to something I didn't do," Phillips said, "and that still stands today."

Relatives were noticeably absent when Phillips was released from jail in December and during his exoneration hearing Tuesday.

"I have a son, I have a daughter and I have an ex-wife, but those relationships were severed to the point where as I haven't seen my daughter or my son in over 47 years," Phillips said. "When I left the street they were 2 and 4.

"So now, in the event that they see this ... I would like them to get in touch so that I can renew those relationships. I'm not sure that it will happen, but I'm hoping it will."

Phillips exoneration was initatied by the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic in 2014 after it learned that Phillips' one-time co-defendant, Richard Palombo, 69, admitted during a 2010 parole hearing that he didn't even know Phillips at he time of the killing. Palombo is currently serving a life sentence in prison.

The victim, Harris, was reported missing by his wife after his abandoned car, with blood in the back seat, was discovered in a Detroit alley about June 26, 1971.

Harris's decomposed body was discovered in Troy the following year and police initially arrested a man named Fred Mitchell, who is accused of organizing the murder, and who possessed the same type of gun used to kill Harris.

Mitchell testified at trial accusing Phillips of participating in the killing. In exchange, Mitchell was never charged in connection with the murder and received leniency in another case. He died in 1997, according to the prosecutor's office.

"The Richard Phillips case has been thoroughly reviewed, investigated and considered," Wayne County Proseutor Kym Worthy said. "It has been determined that the case against Mr. Phillips was based primarily on the false testimony of the main witness in the case."

The decision to dismiss was the result of an investigation conducted by the Conviction Integrity Unit, formed earlier this year, in conjunction with the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic led by professor David Moran.

Andrea Scanlan, Aimee Ford and Wesley Papiernick, three of more than 10 current and former student attorneys who assisted in the exoneration, took turns hugging Phillips after the hearing Tuesday.

An upbeat Phillips spoke to reporters outside the courthouse.

"It's a beautiful day," Phillips said, "not that everyday isn't beautiful.

"Because every day is beautiful, every day is important in all of our lives, not just one day. Every day is important."