(AP) — A 29-year-old Missouri man whose conviction for the killing of a newspaper sports editor was overturned is free from custody after the state attorney general said he would not hold a new trial.

Ryan Ferguson was released from a state prison in Jefferson City Tuesday afternoon and taken to the Boone County Jail in Columbia, which freed him shortly before 6 p.m. He had been imprisoned since 2005.

Ferguson waved to a crowd of cheering supporters from the back seat of his father’s car on the way to a news conference.

A Missouri appeals court last week overturned Ferguson’s conviction in the 2001 strangling and beating death of Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor Kent Heitholt. Ferguson was 17 at the time of the killing. A high school classmate implicated him.