VIRGINIA BEACH

The full Virginia Court of Appeals agreed Tuesday to review the decision by a three-judge panel that overturned the murder conviction of Dustin Turner, the former Navy SEAL trainee whose co-defendant confessed to the crime.

Turner was the first person in Virginia to get a murder conviction overturned under a 2004 law allowing consideration of new non-biological evidence of innocence after sentencing.

In a 2-1 decision earlier this month, the three-judge panel said Turner should be released from prison on the strength of the admission by his SEAL "swim buddy," Billy Joe Brown, that he alone killed Georgia college student Jennifer Evans outside an Oceanfront nightspot in 1995.

Attorney General Bill Mims asked the full appeals court to review the decision.

Two of the court's 11 judges recused themselves from the case. Judge Robert Humphreys was the Virginia Beach commonwealth's attorney who prosecuted the original cases. Judge Randolph Beales is a former attorney general.

The court, based in Richmond, gave attorneys for Turner and the state seven weeks to submit new pleadings in the case.

Bill Sizemore, (757) 446-2276, bill.sizemore@pilotonline.com