Mr. Newton's claim was supported by the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group that seeks to free convicts through DNA evidence.
Prosecutors told him he was ignoring his responsibility to explain to citizens why he was setting free convicted murderers and rapists.
The capital as a whole was last at level four for about a month at the end of 2007 and the start of 2008, when authorities intercepted a plot to free convicted Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi.
His lawyer, Vanessa Potkin — of the Innocence Project, a legal service that seeks to free convicts through DNA evidence — told the judge that newly tested DNA evidence had cleared her client of the 1984 rape, robbery and assault charges on which he had been sentenced to 13 1/3 to 40 years.
"It is punitive, it is cruel, it is insensitive," said Barry C. Scheck, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University who is co-director of the Innocence Project, a pro bono defense program that has used DNA evidence to free convicted murderers.
The city closed the downtown Christmas market early and canceled its New Year fireworks display when authorities intercepted a plot to free convicted Tunisian Nizar Trabelsi from a Belgian jail.
"This is a beautiful day," said Mr. Carter, who has been involved in the cause of freeing innocent convicts since his release in the mid-1980s.
The intrigue begins when Charles Adare Michael Wildingg), a suave Irish ne'er-do-well, disembarks there and is befriended by the rough-hewn but wealthy Sam Flusky Joseph Cottenn), a self-made "emancipist," or freed convict.
Recently arrived in Reno, he works as a counselor to prisoners on the verge of release; a coincidence outside the prison gates brings him together with a freed convict whom he didn't advise, Travis (Richmond Arquette).
Demonstrations flared this month in Brussels calling for Ms. Martin to be kept incarcerated and for tougher rules on freeing convicted criminals, and there could be more protests this weekend opposing her arrival at the convent.
