Scott Hornoff hunched forward in the hard wooden chair in the same courtroom where he had been sentenced to life in prison six years earlier and strained to hear as Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause began to speak.

"Are you firmly convinced that the position you take here today is in the interest of justice?" he asked the prosecutor.

"Yes, your honor," the prosecutor responded.

And with that, the judge who had convicted Scott Hornoff of murder years earlier, and who had also denied him a bid for a new trial in 1999, finally uttered the words Hornoff had so longed to hear.

"The charge is dismissed," the judge said.

With that, the courtroom erupted and Scott Hornoff, finally at the end of a 13-year nightmare, was swallowed up in a sea of loving embraces from his family and friends.

A few moments earlier, Hornoff had witnessed his own vindication. He had sat in another courtroom, listening as a summary of Barry's confession was read into the record. He had listened intently as the man who had actually killed Victoria Cushman was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Hornoff was vindicated.

But he was not vindictive.

"The day [Todd Barry] pled guilty and was sentenced, his brothers and sisters were in the courtroom," Hornoff recently told Crime Library. "They approached me and gave me hugs and handshakes and I told them to tell him that I forgave him."

"I don't understand how he could have kept the secret for so long, but I'm just really glad that he decided to come forward," Hornoff continued. "Whether he knows it or not, his spirit took a great leap forward."

In the months since his release, Hornoff has been focusing on trying to rebuild his relationship with his three sons. The oldest is now 14, the youngest, born soon after Hornoff went to prison, is 6. Now, Hornoff says, he spends most of his time trying to keep the promises he made to himself and others while he was locked up.

He had promised that he would be a father to his sons, and he's working on that. He had jokingly promised that if he ever got out of prison, he would greet the first snowfall with a smile and clear the sidewalk outside his home with a spoon.

Scott Hornoff with his girlfriend after his release (AP/Wide World)

When the blizzard of 2003 hit Rhode Island in February, Hornoff gleefully took a spoon and started digging.

After all he's been through, Hornoff no longer entertains thoughts of being a cop. First of all, after six years of "sleeping on a hard metal bunk with a thin mattress," his injured back is no longer strong enough for police work.

Neither is the sense of unshakable confidence in the wisdom of the justice system that is essential for a cop to do his job.

"After what I saw, there could be 10 witnesses to a crime and unless I saw it myself it would be very difficult for me to accuse anybody, and even if I did, that person would have to convince me that they didn't have a twin," Hornoff said.

Like everyone involved in his case -- the lawyers, the prosecutors, the cops -- Hornoff recognizes that a maddening array of factors contributed to his conviction. He recognizes that he made mistakes along the way.

But unlike many legal experts who have monitored his case, Hornoff is not prepared to accept the notion that in his case the system functioned appropriately but simply came to a wrong conclusion.

"The system failed," he said. "It didn't do what it was supposed to do because it imprisonedan innocent manI'm really sick and tired of hearing that our judicial system, in spite of its flaws, is the best in the world. That doesn't give much consolation to the innocent people and to their loved ones who have to go through what I went through and what my family went through."

In the months since his release from jail Hornoff arranged a whirlwind schedule of speaking engagements -- in New England and elsewhere -- and has pledged to work closely with the National Police Defense Foundation and other groups on behalf of wrongfully imprisoned inmates.

It may be like trying to shovel away a blizzard with a tablespoon but it is, he says, an effort to fulfill another promise he made to himself in prison, a promise simply "to see at least one other innocent person go free."