Hilton Keller had his conviction vacated. Now, he plans to fight to clear his name completely.
Keller walked out of the Cook County Jail just moments before the clock struck Christmas Eve Day.
With free will to hug his family and closest confidants for the first time in decades, Keller has not spared a second.
"I don't know if I'm scared to go to sleep. I just don't want to waste a time for sleep right now for some reason," Keller said.
There is good reason.
Keller spent the last 33 years locked in jail for a murder he never committed, and in that time, life outside prison walls kept marching on.
His closest family came and passed.
"You know, I didn't have the ability to acquire anything in life, of lack of a pain in them, you know, in my later years, to say the least," Keller said.
"He could not get to see his mom and hold her before she left. Her to be so bad that she couldn't hold on to only son, and he shouldn't have been there the first place," said Gertrude Barber, Keller's aunt.
An 18-year-old Keller was convicted in the 1991 murder of a man named Ollie Jones.
Both Keller and his attorney insist he was framed, set up by prosecutors eager to close the case.
"By time the case got to trial, the man who said Hilton had confessed to him completely recanted his testimony and said, 'I made all that stuff up,'" said Stuart Chanen, Keller's attorney.
"There have to be some that they carry some liability, and they should not be immune to either prosecution when they do something so egregious. When they are clearly not acting in good faith, that there should be some level of consequences for that," Keller said.
Now, at 51, life for Keller begins anew in a world he almost does not recognize.
"Don't give up hope. Don't do it," Keller said.
Keller said after years in prison, he has almost no personal possessions.
Now, he will get re-acclimated with family and start putting life together, starting with things as simple as getting a phone.