OR challenges ruling in release in killing of prisons chief

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The state of Oregon has urged a federal appeals court to reverse a judge’s ruling that allowed the release of a man who served nearly 30 years for the killing of Oregon prisons chief Michael Francke. The Oregonian/OregonLive reports the state contends Frank Gable, now 63, and his lawyers failed to meet the legal threshold for showing Gable didn’t commit the fatal stabbing in 1989. Assistant Attorney General Benjamin Gutman on Monday argued that has not produced any new “trustworthy eyewitness accounts” or critical physical evidence to undercut his conviction and that the alleged confession to the killing by another man was unreliable. Gable’s lawyers countered that Oregon’s U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta made the right call and his decision should stand.