GRAND JUNCTIONThe sweet smell of burning sage from a smudge stick wafted around Robert Dewey outside the Mesa County District Courthouse on Monday afternoon as he performed a Native American cleansing ceremony.

Behind him: nearly 18 years in a tiny prison cell and a wrongful conviction on a 1994 rape and murder.

What lies ahead of him is less clear.

A judge granted a joint motion to exonerate Dewey after a re-examination of DNA evidence pointed to a new suspect: Douglas Thames, who is already incarcerated for a similar crime in Fort Collins.

Dewey, 51, now faces the challenge of finding work with a prison record and fixing a back problem that worsened in prison. Then, he joked, there's the

"Coming out of a shoebox into this," Dewey said after his court hearing, "there's a lot for me to catch up on."

Freeing Dewey after more than 6,000 days behind bars was a historic occasion, said District Judge Brian Flynn.

"It's really a pretty humbling day for a lot of people involved in the criminal-justice system," Flynn said.

Dewey's post-conviction attorney, Danyel Joffe, credited Mesa County prosecutor Rich Tuttle, the attorney general's office and law enforcement for re-investigating her client's case after all these years.

"It takes real character to stand up and say we made a mistake 17 years ago," Joffe said as she asked for her client's exoneration in court.

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New DNA evidence clears Dewey in 1994 Grand Junction murder