Image copyright Reprieve Image caption Krishna Maharaj, also known as Kris, has long maintained his innocence 
 
 A British man will have a chance to win his freedom after more than 30 years in a Florida jail. 
 
 A US appeals court on Tuesday granted a new hearing for Kris Maharaj, 78, who has been jailed for more than 30 years for a 1986 double murder in Miami. 
 
 The ruling means that Maharaj's lawyers will be able to present new evidence which they say proves the two men were killed by members of a drug cartel. 
 
 His lawyer claims a Colombian hit man killed Derrick and Duane Moo Young. 
 
 Maharaj's lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith from human-rights organisation Reprieve, applauded the decision, saying "it is a great day for Kris, and I hope now we will finally get him the justice he has long been denied". 
 
 But a spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney's office, Ed Griffith, told BBC News: "We stand by the outcome of the very lengthy and fair evidentiary hearing that Maharaj received in the state court, where the judge found these witnesses and/or claims to not be credible or have any merit." 
 
 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Maharaj's lawyers argue the drug baron Pablo Escobar ordered the murders 
 
 The defence team plans to present new evidence from six cartel associates to argue that the two men, who were business partners of Maharaj, were killed after members of Pablo Escobar's Medellin drugs cartel caught them embezzling laundered drug money. 
 
 The new ruling from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta says "new evidence" would demonstrate that Maharaj could not have been found guilty of the Moo Young murders "beyond a reasonable doubt". 
 
 The judgment adds that the statements by the witnesses, which include Escobar's preferred hit man John Jairo "Popeye" Velasque, "independently corroborate one another". 
 
 They will also present evidence that one hotel guest on the night of the murders, Jaime Vallejo Mejia, was a member of the drug cartel. 
 
 The former businessman, who has been in poor health, had been on death row for 15 years but had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment in 2002. ||||| Lawyers representing Krishna Maharaj, a British businessman who has spent the past 27 years in a Florida prison for a double murder that they say he did not commit, released on Friday details of the 53 witnesses and 498 documents they plan to call on in the hope of persuading a judge to order a retrial. 
 
 
 
 Next Wednesday, the 11th judicial circuit court of Florida in Miami will set a date for a full evidentiary hearing into the Maharaj case. The hearing will constitute his greatest chance in almost three decades to prove his innocence for the murders of his business partner Derrick Moo Young and Young’s son Duane in the Dupont Plaza hotel in Miami on 16 October 1986. 
 
 Maharaj, 75, was sentenced to death in 1987, and though he was taken off death row in 2002 he was resentenced to life imprisonment. He is currently held in a prison in south Florida. 
 
 The newly released documents underline the massive case for exoneration that has been built up by Maharaj’s lawyers. One of them, Clive Stafford Smith of the legal support group Reprieve, who has written a book on the case, The Injustice System: A Murder in Miami and a Trial Gone Wrong, told the Guardian: “Kris Maharaj is so patently innocent that it is unimaginable to me that the state of Florida does not let him go. It is a very sad day when the government desperately wants to keep the wrong person in prison, such that they will not even investigate who the real killers are.” 
 
 In his bid for a retrial, the Trinidad-born Maharaj asserts that he was framed as the murderer to help cover up the involvement of Colombian drug cartels in the killings. The prisoner will present the court with evidence that the victims had been laundering huge sums for the Medellin drug cartel. 
 
 Among the witnesses to be called at the evidentiary hearing will be six people who can testify that Maharaj was 30 miles away from the Dupont Plaza hotel when the murders happened. Further testimony will be provided alleging that another named individual carried out the killings, and illuminating the motive for him doing so. 
 
 Other witnesses will be called to support allegations of perjury by key state witnesses at Maharaj’s trial. 
 
 The newly disclosed list of witnesses the lawyers intend to call at the full evidentiary hearing also includes several investigators and attorneys involved in the case, fingerprint experts and former Miami police officers. Among the pile of documents to be presented are some allegedly demonstrating drug dealing and money laundering by the Youngs and records from the hotel. 
 
 The case is being considered by Judge William Thomas. Ordering a full evidentiary hearing on 24 April, he stated that Maharaj would be granted a new trial if he could persuade the court that the new evidence that will be presented at the full hearing was of “such nature that it would probably produce an acquittal on retrial”. 
 
 Lawyers for the state have claimed much of the new material is hearsay and inadmissible in any new trial. The judge said he would take a view on admissibility at the evidentiary hearing.
– After 27 years in prison, Krishna "Kris" Maharaj may finally get a chance to prove what he's been claiming for years: that he was framed for a pair of murders actually ordered by infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. CNN has a profile on Maharaj's case detailing how, in 1986, he was arrested for the Miami murders of his business partners Derrick and Duane Moo Young—even though he had an alibi. Police said the Moo Youngs had cheated the former millionaire out of $400,000. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. That sentence has since been reduced to life in prison, but in April a Florida judge scheduled a November hearing to determine if new evidence could undermine the verdict. Maharaj's lawyers have 53 witnesses and 498 documents on tap, according to the Guardian. "We've got several Colombian cartel people to say, 'We did the murders,'" one lawyer says. These cartel witnesses say that the Moo Youngs were money launderers for the cartel, and were killed because they lost some of the money. The lawyers also say they can prove that prosecutors hid evidence that would have proved Maharaj's innocence. But in court filings, prosecutors say the evidence is all "hearsay and inadmissible." (Click to read about how Escobar's hippos are causing problems in Colombia.)