(Raleigh, NC) A three-judge panel ruled today that 70-year-old Joseph Sledge was wrongfully convicted nearly four decades ago of killing a mother and daughter in North Carolina. The judges were appointed by the state Supreme Court after the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission found enough evidence of Joseph Sledge's innocence to recommend a judicial review. Sledge was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison in the murders of Josephine Davis and her adult daughter, Aileen, who were found stabbed to death in September 1976 in their home in Elizabethtown. In the Commission's report on the case, lab tests in both 2010 and 2012 found no DNA connection or no hair at the crime scene that matched those of Sledge.