NEW HAVEN — A Connecticut man who spent 17 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit has been freed based on newly discovered cellphone records.

The Connecticut Federal Defender Office tells The Hartford Courant that 37-year-old Vernon Horn was released by a judge Wednesday after a motion to set aside his robbery and murder convictions was filed by prosecutors.

Horn was convicted in 2000 using cellphone records. His lawyers say recent evaluations of the records established that Horn was never in possession of that cellphone and that two witnesses for the state perjured themselves.

Horn was convicted of the 1999 shooting death of 22-year-old Caprice Hardy in New Haven.

Horn in a statement said, "Nineteen years of my life were stolen from me; my daughter went without her father."