He said factually innocent.

He said it into the record, in open court, with the whole world watching, and in doing so he restored to Elena Cole not only her freedom but her name, the thing that five years of confident public accusation had stripped from her.

There is a difference between being let go and being cleared, between the state admitting it cannot prove you did it and the state declaring that you did not.

Elena received the second, fuller thing, the complete restoration, the public unmaking of the lie that had been told about her.