Gell, who was sentenced last week to five years in prison for having sex with a 15-year-old girlfriend, is set to go to federal court next year to confront SBI Special Agent Dwight Ransome, the lead investigator in the case that landed him on death row for a 1995 murder he did not commit.

In a recent court filing, Gell's lawyers said they discovered, for the first time, that Ransome and the case's original prosecutor had hidden additional evidence favorable to Gell from the two prosecutors who tried Gell for murder in 1998. Shortly before the trial, the prosecution's key witnesses were about to change their story, only to be held in line by the threat of first-degree murder charges, the lawyers said.

Ransome's lawyers dismissed the charge as inflammatory and speculative.

Gell spent nine years behind bars, half of it on death row, for murder in the 1995 death of Allen Ray Jenkins, a retired truck driver in the small town of Aulander in Bertie County. A judge ordered a new trial for Gell in 2002 because the prosecutors had withheld evidence favorable to him.

That evidence included statements from witnesses who saw the victim alive while Gell was in jail on a theft charge, and a taped phone conversation of the state's two star witnesses saying they had to "make up a story" for investigators.

A Bertie County jury quickly acquitted Gell at a trial in February 2004.

In 2005, Gell filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Ransome; former Aulander Police Chief Gordon Godwin; David Hoke and Debra Graves, former prosecutors in the state Attorney General's Office; and William Ferrell, Hoke and Graves' then-supervisor.

As prosecutors, Hoke, Graves and Ferrell enjoy absolute immunity and were dismissed from the case. Godwin and the Town of Aulander settled the case earlier this year by paying Gell $93,750.

Ransome, the lead investigator in the case, is the sole remaining defendant. Neither Ransome nor his lawyer, Gary Clemmons of New Bern, responded to requests for interviews.

The allegations against Ransome fall into two categories: withholding favorable evidence and fabricating evidence to undermine Gell's defense.

The murder charges against Gell rested on the testimony of two girls who were 15 at the time of the murder, Crystal Morris and Shanna Hall. The girls pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received 10-year sentences in return for testifying against Gell.

The two girls kept changing their stories to investigators and ultimately told Ransome that Gell had told them in advance that he planned to kill Jenkins. This version -- that the murder was premeditated, and the girls were part of the conspiracy -- formed the basis for Gell's arrest and the plea deal with Morris and Hall.

Shortly before Gell's trial, the girls tried to change their story once again, his lawyers said.

"The state's two key witnesses, Crystal Morris and Shanna Hall, had on the eve of the first trial in 1998 recanted a key portion of their statements against Gell; that Gell had told them beforehand that he planned to rob and kill Jenkins," the lawyers wrote. "In response, Ransome secretly took steps to induce Morris and Hall to restore their stories in time for trial."

Discovered in June

Gell's lawyers -- David Rudolf of Chapel Hill and Barry Scheck of New York City -- found this out during a June deposition of former District Attorney David Beard, who handled the prosecution of the two girls but recused himself from the trial because of a routine conflict.

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