MONTPELIER, Vt.A state law passed in 2008 that allows people convicted of crimes to try to be exonerated based on DNA evidence appears headed for its first test.

John Grega, a Long Island man convicted in 1995 of killing his wife, Christine, while on vacation in Vermont, was released from prison Wednesday, a day after a judge vacated his sentence and ordered a new trial because DNA from an unknown man was found on her body. He was released on $75,000 bail.

The case marks the first time a court in Vermont has even entertained -- never mind granted -- a request that a felony conviction be overturned based on new DNA evidence.

Grega's lawyers said Thursday that the Vermont Innocence Protection Act doesn't spell out the procedures that take place when new DNA evidence raises questions about a conviction and the defendant is granted a new trial.

"There are some basic procedural questions that need to be answered. They probably need to be discussed with the court," lawyer Ian Carleton said.

Gretchen Bennett, executive director of the Boston-based New England Innocence Project, which works on such cases around the six-state region, said DNA evidence has resulted in numerous prisoners being freed, as well as the person who actually did a crime then being charged and convicted.

Bennett said the Grega case was the first to her knowledge in which the state had pushed for a new trial. When new DNA evidence points to someone other than the person convicted, "it's generally considered to be pretty conclusive," she said.

Prosecutors had accused John Grega of raping, sodomizing, beating and strangling his 31-year-old wife in 1994 and leaving her body in a whirlpool bathtub at the West Cover condominium where they were staying on vacation with their then-2-year-old son. He had been found guilty of aggravated murder.

Grega, a former Lake Grove, N.Y., resident, walked out of the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield and into the arms of family and friends late Wednesday afternoon.

A month earlier, Carleton and the Vermont defender general's office had filed a motion in court saying new analysis showed that skin cells taken from inside Christine Grega's rectum belonged not to her husband but to another unknown man.

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Vt. DNA exoneration law is headed for 1st test