A woman incarcerated for 17 years for the death of a homeless man has been freed after a judge decided that she had been wrongfully convicted.

Superior Court Judge Mark Arnold lifted Susan Mellen's life sentence in what he called "a failure of the criminal justice system," prompting the court to burst into a deafening applause.

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Now 59-years-old, Mellen joyfully embraced her three children on Friday after she was released from federal prison where she suffered for a crime she did not commit.

"I always knew that one day God would bring the truth to the light," Mellen told the media upon her release on October 10.

Shrieking with joy, Mellen held her 19-month-old grandson Aiden for the very first time outside a Torrance courthouse and even joked around.

It is clear though that her time inside the federal prison had taken its toll on her as she described the experience as a "cruel punishment," saying that she wept every night inside the house of penance.

She, however, never lost faith that someday the truth wiould literally set her free and even wrote the word "freedom" on the bottom of her shoes.

Deirdre O'Connor, the head of a project seeking to free wrongly convicted people named "Innocence Matters," probed Mellen's case and found out that the police detective who took her into custody was also involved in two other wrong convictions in 1994.

Her conviction, which was reportedly based solely on witness testimony, removed any possibility of parole after she was found guilty of organizing the beating of Richard Daly which led to his death in 1997.

When asked about those who organized her imprisonment, Mellen said she held no grudge against them, adding that she always forgave her enemies and even thanked them for "bringing her closer to God."

Tagsjailed, Freed, Susan Mellen, wrongfully jailed, life sentence