Pennsylvania death row inmate Ernest Simmons, who was once four days from execution for the grisly murder of an 80-year-old Johnstown woman, has been granted a new trial because of prosecutorial misconduct.

Johnstown Tribune Democrat Ernest Simmons, who was charged with the murder of Anna Knaze, is led to District Justice Rick Farra's Johnstown office by Cambria County Prison officials in this August 20, 1992, photo. About the Innocence Institute    The Innocence Institute of Point Park University is an investigative reporting organization that probes allegations of wrongful convictions while helping student journalists learn investigative reporting. It is a partnership between the department of journalism and mass communication at Point Park and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Previous coverage Attorneys seek quicker decision in Simmons death sentence appeal (3/23/04) Death row inmate's appeal may shift (3/5/04) Judge weighs convict's claims (2/6/04) Is death row convict guilty of killing Johnstown woman? (1/25/04)

In a 52-page opinion issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Sean J. McLaughlin ordered Simmons, 47, to be retried within 120 days or released because police and prosecutors "withheld favorable evidence that could have been used to substantially impeach the testimony of the most pivotal prosecution witness."

"When you take a look at what happened in this case, you have to be shocked," said Robert Dunham, an assistant federal defender with the Defender Association of Philadelphia, Simmons' appellate attorneys.

The ruling said Simmons' rights were violated by police and prosecutors who hid secretly recorded tapes and hair evidence that supported Simmons' innocence.

The ruling also referenced evidence uncovered in 2003 by the Innocence Institute of Point Park University and published in a story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The story reported that key witness Margaret Cobaugh lied on the stand when she linked Simmons to the murder.

"This was not a case of one piece of evidence being overlooked," Dunham said. "It's not even a case of two or three pieces of evidence being overlooked. It was, as the court found, a consistent pattern that denied Ernest Simmons a fair trial."

Cambria County District Attorney David Tulowitzki yesterday said he was prepared to appeal McLaughlin's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and take the case back to trial if those appeals fail.

Simmons was born in 1957 in Philadelphia to a 13-year-old mother, sexually abused as a child and allowed to roam the streets to find his meals in trash bins before being bounced around to foster homes. He had served four different prison terms by the time he was paroled in August 1991, at age 34, and settled in Johnstown.

One of the convictions involved an attack on an elderly Harrisburg-area man, and police suspected Simmons in unsolved murders of elderly residents there. For those reasons, he quickly became a suspect when Anna Knaze, 80, was slain in May 1992. Her spine was severed, all her ribs were broken and she was strangled.

Cobaugh, a friend and neighbor of Knaze, provided the only credible evidence tying Simmons to the murder. Cobaugh testified in 1993 that she was raped by Simmons just hours after Knaze's killing and that he told her to keep quiet or "she would get the same thing Anna Knaze got."

Simmons' appeals were denied repeatedly in state court and Gov. Tom Ridge signed a death warrant setting the execution for April 14, 1996. Four days before that, Simmons was granted a stay.

Soon, the Defender Association, which represents death row inmates on appeal, entered the case and found that Simmons' ex-girlfriend had helped police secretly tape-record Simmons. In the tapes, he denied 19 separate times having any involvement in the killings, but the prosecution hid the tapes from the defense at trial.

The appeal also revealed that police Detective Richard Rok, who later was convicted of assaulting a detainee and sentenced to federal prison, never told defense attorneys that Cobaugh was unable to pick Simmons' picture out of an array of mug shots on her first attempt. The detective also hid the fact that he helped Cobaugh, an ex-convict, avoid another prison term for purchase of a gun by an ex-felon.

Rok later admitted he never told the defense that Cobaugh's clothes were tested for forensic evidence and yielded hair samples that did not match Simmons.

In 2003, Cobaugh told reporters from the Innocence Institute that she "could not positively identify anyone" as her attacker and identified Simmons only after a police detective told her he knew Simmons had killed Knaze but "didn't have a witness."

Dunham acknowledged the appellate process could take years.

"Ernie has spent a decade on death row after having been wrongfully convicted," he said. "The district court's decision is one major step."

Dunham said he hasn't yet been able to talk with Simmons, who is on death row at the State Correctional Institution Greene.

In a recent letter to the Innocence Institute, Simmons said he was confident of an eventual exoneration.

"So I'm getting ready for when that time comes, and it will come, my friend," he wrote on Feb. 16.