Frank Gable won his freedom Monday as a federal magistrate in Portland ordered his unconditional release and barred the state from retrying him in the 1989 fatal stabbing of Oregon prison chief Michael Francke.

U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta ordered the Marion County murder indictment against Gable be dismissed with prejudice, meaning the state can’t bring future charges against Gable in the killing.

The state or any count is “BARRED from rearresting, reindicting or retrying Petitioner for the murder of Michael Francke,” Acosta wrote in a minute order appearing on the case docket. A full opinion is expected to follow.

Last week, Oregon Solicitor General Benjamin Gutman told the judge that the Marion County District Attorney’s Office didn’t plan to retry or reindict Gable within a 90-day deadline Acosta had set, but wanted to reserve the right to reinvestigate the case and rearrest or reindict him in the future.

“I can honestly say that I do not understand how the state thinks they can do both,” the judge responded then. “This wasn’t a menu option.”

Assistant Federal Public Defender Nell Brown had asked the judge to lift any federal supervision of Gable, dismiss his original indictment in the Francke killing and grant him unconditional release unless the state obtained what she called a “constitutional” indictment that’s not based on false testimony or tainted evidence.

The judge invited both sides to submit further legal briefs on Friday and ruled on Monday.

In April 2019, Acosta found that no reasonable juror would have convicted Gable in light of another man’s multiple confessions to Francke’s killing and because nearly all the witnesses in the case have recanted since the trial. The confessions had been excluded from Gable’s initial trial.

Acosta also found that Gable’s conviction resulted from improper interrogation of witnesses by investigators and flawed polygraphs that further shaped witness statements to police.

He then ordered Gable to be released or retried within 90 days. The judge put the 90-day clock on hold at times as the state unsuccessfully appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld Acosta’s ruling dismissing the conviction and then unsuccessfully petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene.

Gable left prison on June 28, 2019, after nearly 30 years. He had been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in the killing of Francke.

Francke bled to death from stab wounds and was found dead on the north porch of the Dome Building where he worked. The door of his nearby state-issued Pontiac stood open, its dome light found on.

Patrick Francke, Michael Francke’s older brother who has been a staunch defender of Gable, said Monday afternoon that the judge’s final ruling is not unexpected.

“Obviously, we’ve very excited,” he said. “I still can’t understand why it took so long for justice to be reached.”