By A.C. Thompson

Antoine "Soda Pop" Goff's exit from the California state prison in Solano was downright cinematic. As prison officials escorted him from his cell to the front door of the maximum-security penitentiary Sept. 3, inmates of all races rose to their feet, applauding like high-society types at the opera.

Thirteen years after he was wrongly imprisoned on murder charges, Goff, 34, was going home to San Francisco (see "Innocent!," 9/3/03).

"I don't know how to feel," he told me via cell phone a few hours after his reentry into the free world. "I'm just in the air! It's a feeling I can't describe."

The nightmare dates back to 1990, when Goff and fellow San Franciscan John J. Tennison were convicted of slaying Roderick "Cooley" Shannon, who'd been pummeled and executed with a point-blank blast from a shotgun.

Goff, the purported shooter, was sentenced to 27 years to life for the crime, which took place in the parking lot of a Visitacion Valley grocery store; Tennison got 25 years to life. But on Aug. 26, federal Judge Claudia Wilken voided Tennison's conviction, issuing a 103-page decision ripping two prominent San Francisco cops and a prosecutor for unlawfully withholding an array of crucial evidence from defense lawyers.

As TV news cameras rolled, Tennison, 31, left Mule Creek State Prison in the small Central Valley burg of Ione on Aug. 29.

Wilken's ruling, which raises serious doubts about the integrity of famed homicide inspector Napoleon Hendrix, retired police chief Earl Sanders, and veteran prosecutor George Butterworth, cleared the way for a state judge to order Goff's release.

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Sitting on the steps of his mother's Mission District flat Sept. 7, Goff, a smallish man with a squinty left eye and a minimalist goatee and mustache, quietly reflected on his odyssey.

Sanders and Hendrix, Goff said, "knew we didn't do this.... All they had to do was walk through the neighborhood, and everyone would say, 'Soda Pop and J.J. didn't have nothing to do with it.' "

Goff spent most of his first five years behind bars at Pelican Bay State Prison, a notorious "supermax" facility sited near the Oregon border. While he was there, guards threw a mentally ill inmate into a tub of scalding, 125-degree water. "I was cooking," that prisoner would later tell 60 Minutes. During the same time period, a federal judge identified a "pattern of needless and officially sanctioned brutality" against Pelican Bay inmates.

Goff witnessed the ugliness firsthand, watching a rifle-equipped correctional officer break up a melee on the exercise yard by putting a bullet in the head of an inmate. "I'm sitting there wondering if I'm going to get out of there alive," Goff recalled.

The transfer to the relatively quiet confines of the Solano lockup, where Goff spent the rest of his sentence, was a relief. But outside the prison walls, his appeal was going nowhere. He said two lawyers hired by his family did little to advance his case.

Desperate, Goff sent a letter to J. Tony Serra, pleading for the noted trial lawyer's help. Serra passed the letter to San Francisco attorney Diana Samuelson, who took on Goff's appeal pro bono in 1999. "When Diana came to see me we made a pact. She said: 'We're sticking this out to the end.' That made me rejoice," Goff recalled. "I had somebody that believed in me, that could help me get home." Along with Samuelson, lawyer Nancy Yamahiro and several other attorneys volunteered on the case, while Bill Harris, an SLA member turned private investigator, ran down leads.

Talking about Samuelson, Goff, pausing as he started to choke up, said "I owe her everything."

After years of grueling unpaid labor, the lawyer is reveling in the moment. "It's a wonderful feeling to know you've participated in this team effort.... It's inspirational. It provides a lot of energy to keep fighting and working," a buoyant Samuelson told me, adding that she hopes the victory will be a source of motivation for other wrongly convicted prisoners.

"The absolute joy of it is just remarkable," Yamahiro said with a huge smile.

• • •

"Life on the outs" is wonderful, but slightly overwhelming for Goff at this point. He hasn't slept much since his release and still rises every morning at 5 a.m. He tried to get a new social security card – the first step to getting a job – and found he couldn't remember the number.

Crowds seem to freak him out a bit. At a barbecue in his honor, as 50 Cent boomed from a stereo and ribs sizzled on the grill, he hovered on the fringes, seeming almost detached from the event, clad in newly purchased Sunday church attire, a Mona Lisa grin on his face.

"I used to be real sociable, the center of attention," he told me. "Now I guess I've been gone so long I don't what to say."