GREENSBORO — Just after a judge released Greg Taylor from a life sentence for a murder he didn't commit, Wake County's district attorney moved to shake his hand and apologize.

"I don't remember much more than him saying, 'I'm sorry,' " recalled Taylor, 47, less than a week later in the living room of his father's Starmount home, where he spent summers and weekends as a kid after his parents divorced.

His dad remembers every word.

"He also said if only he'd had all of the evidence," interjected Ed Taylor.

This is not a small detail for the father.

"For 17 years, I've been saying to people that I've had a son in prison for murder, and in the next breath, I'm telling them, 'But he's been wrongly convicted,' " said the 72-year-old retired safety equipment agent for the nuclear power industry. "We've all been vindicated."

Greg Taylor's is the first successful case before the N.C. Actual Innocence Commission, the only state-run agency in the country dedicated to proving a convicted person's innocence.

Walking with him every step was his father, who after hearing the evidence was convinced his son did not murder a prostitute.

Even as his son continues to reclaim his life after 6,149 days behind bars — replacing the prison-issued bifocals with trendy wire rims, picking up a fork for the first time since entering the prison system, sleeping with a night light until he's comfortable in the dark — the father's anxiety is just starting to ease.

He laughs as his son, a technology geek from the '80s, can't stop talking about Facebook or his new digital camera: "You can take a picture and you can look at it in the camera and... you don't even have to print it out," enthused the son.

Or about the new cell phone with voice mail, a camera and texting capabilities, asking, "Why in the world does anybody need all that?" Phones were brick-sized the last time he held one.

And the father smiles when his son talks about the things he longed to do before stepping outside the prison walls.

"I wanted to feel carpet under my feet and I wanted to take a walk at night," he said as the older man listened intently.

The father's face flushes, as though he's fighting back tears, when his son recalls having faced a possible death sentence and, later, life in prison.

"I had the truth on my side and yet it didn't seem to matter," he said.

In 1991, the younger Taylor was on the losing end of a battle against the twin demons of drugs and alcohol when his father got the call that he was being held by the police.

"I figured if he had been arrested for something, he was probably guilty," Ed Taylor said.

"I went to his trial waiting to hear the evidence... but I heard nothing. They came up with a jailhouse snitch (who claimed his son confessed), and Greg's lawyer presented no real defense and didn't even know enough about the case to do a proper cross-examination."

His son, living in Cary, had been in Raleigh looking for drugs in late September 1991, when his Pathfinder truck got stuck in a ditch. When he returned, the police were investigating the murder of a prostitute whose body had been left nearby.

Greg Taylor told investigators he and his friend had seen the body that night but decided not to get involved. Taylor maintained his innocence. He was nevertheless convicted of first-degree murder.

"In my darkest hours, I speculated I could die in prison," said Taylor, who spent his time working on two associate degrees while tutoring others to do the same.

"But most of the time, I was optimistic — sometime, somehow, someday."

Meanwhile, his dad soothed his own soul, as he sought justice for his son, with a verse from the Bible — Micah 6:8 — which told him, "Believe in truth, seek the good and walk quietly with your God."

"I tell people it's been a divine, guiding hand that's led us from one step to another," he said.

That could explain his encounter with state Rep. Pricey Harrison, who suggested he write a synopsis of his son's story and present it before a hearing she was co-chairing for the N.C. Actual Innocence Commission.

The day of the hearing, Harrison told him he probably wouldn't get his chance.

She suggested he give a copy of the synopsis to Dick Taylor, the director of the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers, who also would be attending the meeting.

Neither knew at the time that Dick Taylor would be having dinner with I. Beverly Lake, then chief justice of the state Supreme Court — who would become a staunch supporter — and Chris Mumma, executive director of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence.

"I always felt it was fate that his story was delivered to us that night," said Mumma, whose nonprofit center investigates innocence claims.

The ensuing investigation revealed that blood found on Greg Taylor's truck that night was from an animal, not a human. DNA evidence collected from the dead woman's body showed no connection to Taylor. And an inmate in another prison had confessed to the crime.

Now, Ed Taylor can rejoice as his son talks of working with Mumma's nonprofit to help others who have been wrongly convicted, possibly by updating his technical skills and using them to help streamline office tasks.

The father, most of all, is admiring.

"I'm proud of him for being able to survive in the system for 17 years without a single infraction — and he came out with his dignity," Ed Taylor said.

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