Roosevelt Curry was overjoyed by the news.

As he told Crime Library in an interview after the ceremony, "It feels good. The state of Georgia in a sense said that they was wrong."

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Curry was quick to note that he never lost faith that the board would ultimately pardon his late aunt. "Right's going to do right in the end," he said. "Wrong is going to win nothing."

He also said the family had been contacted in the weeks leading up to the pardon by a member of the Knight family. He declined to identify the family, but produced an unsigned letter, purported to have been written by a descendent of the slain man. In it, the writer pleaded for peace between the two families, a peace Curry is more than willing to grant he says.

In the letter, the writer maintains that whatever actually transpired in that old mill building two generations ago will always remain a mystery. The only two people who really know what happened, he wrote, Lena Baker and E.B. Knight, are now both long dead. "But we do know that that what the court system did was totally wrong, and in my opinion evil," the writer continues, expressing a sentiment that Curry said he shares with all his heart.

In a way, the writer noted, "we all are victims of that terrible event."

That, too is a sentiment that Curry says he shares.