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EASTON — Jonathan Smith, one of three men implicated in the 1987 murder-burglary of Adeline Wilford in Easton, was released as part of a plea deal on Wednesday after spending more than 20 years of a life sentence behind bars.

Smith entered an Alford plea to first-degree felony murder and daytime housebreaking in the case of Wilford’s death. The plea is not an admission of guilt but acknowledges a potential for conviction if the case had gone to trial.

The conditions of his pleading guilty were that his sentence be suspended and he be granted probation. Talbot Circuit Judge Stephen Kehoe accepted the plea and handed Smith five years of supervised probation and a suspended life sentence.

Joseph Michael, special prosecutor in the case, said he reached the agreement with Smith’s attorney Don Salzman over the weekend. Michael said a plea deal had always been a potential outcome in the case but Smith had not previously been willing plead guilty.

The prosecutor said of the agreement Wednesday that while “the only real justice would be for this crime to never have happened,” he stands behind his offer “because this matter needs to be closed.”

Smith “can hide behind an Alford plea,” he said, “but he’s a guilty man and he will always be guilty.”

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Here's the quick summary of the case.

1. Palm print evidence was suppressed by the prosecution.

2. Another man's confession of guilt (including details that were not publicly known) as well as detailing how the palm print got there pointed to another killer -- which the police did not pursue.

3. Everything else was a sideshow.

In this case the Alford plea is good since the prosecution would have to had retry him, and probably look silly in light of new evidence.