Sullivan Walter brushed away tears Thursday as a New Orleans judge ordered his immediate release from prison, 36 years after he was incarcerated for a rape he didn’t commit.

Withheld evidence and fudged testimony kept Walter, now 53, wrongfully locked away, the Innocence Project New Orleans and the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office agreed, as they moved jointly to vacate his sentence and set him free from Elayn Hunt Correctional Center at St. Gabriel.

According to their motion, blood and seminal fluid could have exonerated Walter at his trial and throughout his appeals’ process. But neither the prosecutors nor the defense attorneys at his trial transparently presented that evidence.

“To say this was unconscionable,” Judge Darryl Derbigny said Thursday, “is an understatement.”