After years of progress, setbacks and challenges, the effort to free two men acquitted of murder but given life sentences in prison has taken another step forward.

Lawyers for Terrence J. Richardson filed an argument last week in the Court of Appeals seeking to bring new evidence on the case into his innocence petition, based on the results of a two-day evidentiary hearing in Sussex Circuit Court held in late May.

“The Commonwealth should not be permitted to maintain her ill-gotten guilty plea, which not a shred of credible evidence supports,” a supplemental brief to the filing reads. “As demonstrated herein, Mr. Richardson has proven by a preponderance of the evidence that he is entitled to a writ of actual innocence.”

Decades earlier in 1999, Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne were charged with the killing of Waverly County Officer Allen W. Gibson a year earlier. On the advice of their lawyers, they pled guilty to lesser crimes and were acquitted of murder in federal court, only to be given life sentences by a district judge who used their guilty pleas as cause for conviction.

The two recently began to advocate for their freedom after learning that evidence that may have kept them out of jail wasn’t provided during their trials. With the assistance of attorney Jarrett Adams, they have worked for years to overturn their convictions.

The judge overseeing the May Sussex hearing ruled that Richardson and his lawyers could use an eyewitness statement from Shannequia Gay that wasn’t part of the cases decades earlier.

Gay witnessed Gibson’s murder at the age of 9 and was relied on by police to help identify suspects, but wasn’t a witness or mentioned during the trials that followed. Her statement described a suspect that didn’t match Richardson’s appearance at the time, according to his attorneys.

Gay herself cast doubt on Richardson’s part in the murder when she spoke as one of several witnesses during the hearing.

“Mr. Richardson, look at me,” Gay said. “I think I would remember if I saw you or not. I haven’t seen him.”

The hearing was years in the making for Richardson, Claiborne and their attorneys, and came after multiple turns in their efforts to clear their names and gain their freedom, as the two gained allies in state politics and the Virginia NAACP.

Support from the Attorney General’s Office during Mark Herring’s tenure was reversed under Jason Miyares’ administration, which considers the case a settled matter. The arguments put forth by lawyers for the Commonwealth of Virginia followed the same track, repeatedly challenging the approach of Richardson’s lawyers and validity of the new evidence.

“Judge, we have the right person who pled guilty in 1998, and we don’t believe these questions are appropriate,” said Brandon T. Wrobleski, senior assistant to the attorney general.

Adams said arguments could be heard in court before the end of the year.