A federal judge has thrown out the conviction of a Wyoming inmate sentenced to die nearly a decade ago for the killing of a correctional officer during an escape attempt.

U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer set aside the death sentence and ordered a new trial for James Martin Harlow, who'd been convicted of murdering Cpl. Wayne Martinez in 1997. Harlow was one of only two inmates on Wyoming's death row.

In his 232-page ruling, released Friday, Brimmer cited several reasons for throwing out Harlow's conviction:

* Conflicts between Harlow's trial attorney, Keith Goody, and former state Public Defender Sylvia Hackl;

* The Wyoming Public Defender's Office failure to provide enough money for an adequate investigation into circumstances related to the case;

* The withholding by state prosecutors of files pertaining to inmate witnesses who testified against Harlow;

* Trial Judge Kenneth Stebner's refusal to allow Harlow's attorney to adequately question potential jurors about the death penalty and other issues.

"Numerous errors were present in the trial of James Martin Harlow," Brimmer wrote. "Individually, any one of them likely would have altered the outcome of the trial verdict, or possibly the appeal."

Brimmer gave prosecutors 120 days to grant Harlow a new trial.

Attorney General Bruce Salzburg did not respond to a message left Friday afternoon seeking comment on the ruling.

Cindy DeLancey, the chief prosecutor for Carbon County, where Harlow was originally convicted, said Friday afternoon she couldn't comment on the case because she hadn't had an opportunity to review it yet or confer with the Attorney General's Office.

Reached at a death penalty conference in California, Goody called the judge's decision, "the best news I've had in years.

"It was a terrible miscarriage of justice and my guy was on the row," he said. "And they were trying to kill him."

Goody said he was fired from the Public Defender's Office for publicly insisting at the time of the trial he wasn't getting the resources to defend Harlow.

Brimmer found that Harlow's trial counsel failed to conduct a reasonable investigation into Harlow's background and character because of a "budget conscious head of the state public defender's office."

"When a man's life was at stake, there was surely $20,000 to be found for such an important investigation, either in the public defender's budget or the governor's contingency fund," Brimmer wrote.

Sean O'Brien, the Kansas City, Mo. attorney whom Brimmer appointed to the case three years ago, said he was pleased with Brimmer's ruling, but called the case tragic.

"There is no good outcome when somebody as good and decent as Wayne Martinez is murdered," O'Brien said. "But we are glad and hopeful the judge has done the right thing."

Martinez died during a July 1997 escape attempt at the maximum-security unit of the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins. Harlow held Martinez while two other inmates, Bryan Collins and Richard Dowdell, stabbed the 27-year-old correctional officer and struck him in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to court documents.

All three inmates were tried and convicted in Martinez's death. Harlow received the death penalty. The other two men were sentenced to life behind bars.

The Wyoming Supreme Court upheld Harlow's conviction in 2003, but two years later, Brimmer ordered a stay of execution after he received Harlow's petition for federal court review.

O'Brien and Terry Harris, a Cheyenne attorney also appointed by Brimmer to represent Harlow, used federal subpoenas to secure records from the Wyoming Department of Corrections and other state agencies that had never been turned over to Harlow's previous attorneys in his original trial or state Supreme Court appeal.

In hearings before Brimmer in late 2006, Harlow's attorneys asserted that prosecutor Tom Campbell and lawyers from the state denied requests from their client's original trial lawyers for information about other inmate witnesses who testified against him.

Lawyers with the attorney general's office argued that while it was unfortunate Harlow's original team didn't receive the records, withholding them neither affected the outcome of the trial nor violated Harlow's rights.

Harlow remains held at Wyoming State Penitentiary, according to Department of Corrections spokeswoman Melinda Brazzale.

With Brimmer's ruling, Dale Wayne Eaton becomes Wyoming's only death row inmate. In 2004, a Natrona County jury sentenced Eaton to die for the 1988 kidnap, rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell.

The Associated Press contributed to this report. Reach Joshua Wolfson at (307) 266-0582 or at josh.wolfson@trib.com.