The ruling by a Franklin County Common Pleas Judge yesterday finally declared Dale Johnston innocent in the 1982 slayings and clears the way for him to seek compensation from the state.

Johnston was sentenced to die in 1984 for the shooting deaths of his teenage stepdaughter and her fiance. Their bodies were cut up and buried in a cornfield and thrown into the Hocking River in southeastern Ohio. The shaky case against him toppled on appeal, and he was freed in 1990.

Another man confessed in 2008 to slaughtering the couple.