Rickey Johnson, of Leesville has been freed from Angola State Penitentiary after serving 26 years for a crime he did not commit.

District Judge Robert Burgess declared Johnson, 52, officially cleared of the aggravated rape charge, which he was wrongly convicted in January 1983. The victim identified him from a picture that was eight years out of date. Johnson was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison without chance of parole.

The rape happened July 12, 1982 in Mani, a small, west-central Louisiana town about 170 miles northeast of Houston. Nine months after the rape, another happened in the same apartment complex as the first. Police found John McNeal guilty of the second rape. The DNA tests performed on Johnson revealed that McNeal was guilty of both rapes, according to Vanessa Potkin, Johnson’s lawyer. McNeal is currently serving a life sentence at Angola prison after having been convicted on May 15, 1984.

Johnson was released Monday and appeared Tuesday at a news conference in Baton Rouge where he said it would do him no good to be angry, the USA Today quoted him. He added that he would just like to “focus on the future” and not to look back.

Friends and family who stood by him over the past two and half decades declaring his innocence were there to greet him on Monday.

“My family is what has kept me going. I want to thank the Innocence Project for helping me prove my innocence and I plan to be home by the end of the week,” local media sources quoted Johnson saying.

Since 1990, 10 men in Louisiana and 211 across the U.S. have been exonerated by DNA evidence after getting long sentences for violent crimes.