HARRISBURG Christmas bittersweet for man held 28 years

The man said the highlight of his holidays while in prison was phoning his family.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- A man released from prison last summer after spending 28 years behind bars for a murder he may not have committed said his first Christmas as a free man was bittersweet.
"All my brothers and sisters have kids, wives, husbands, and I don't have any," said Steven Crawford in an interview with The Patriot-News of Harrisburg.
Crawford was released in June after new evidence -- long-forgotten lab notes discovered in a briefcase -- raised doubts about his guilt in the 1970 murder of a 13-year-old neighbor.
In his decades in prison, Crawford said the highlight of his Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays was a 15-minute phone call to his family.
"It was painful for me going back to that cell knowing all the joy that was going on there without me," Crawford said.
Now 46, Crawford was 14 when neighborhood paperboy John Eddie Mitchell was beaten to death with a sledgehammer in the Crawford family's garage. Investigators said the killer robbed the boy of the $32 he had collected on his route.
Police charged Crawford four years later, and in 1974 he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Forensic experts testified that a bloody palm print at the murder scene proved that Crawford had been present for the killing.
Crawford was twice given a new trial, and both times convicted. The case was periodically examined as new evidence surfaced, including two reported, but never corroborated, confessions by other men.
Evidence found
Then, Dauphin County District Attorney Edward M. Marsico dropped all charges in July after a copy of an old state police chemist's report contradicting the palm print evidence was discovered in the briefcase of a deceased county detective.
The document had never been turned over to defense lawyers. Other evidence revealed that other copies of the report had been altered so as to appear more favorable to prosecutors.
Marsico said he still believed Crawford committed the murder, but felt he could no longer prove it in court.
Crawford has insisted he is innocent for decades, and repeatedly turned down plea bargains that would have set him free in return for admitting guilt.
"I'm just still taking it all in -- being free and being able to do anything I want to do and go anywhere I want to go," he said. "I want to experience everything."