(CNN) -- An intellectually disabled construction worker was freed Wednesday after nine years in a Texas prison, including four of them on death row, after his initial conviction for murdering a year-old infant was overturned. Manuel Velez, whose IQ is 65 and who is functionally illiterate in his native Spanish as well as English, was convicted in Brownsville in 2008 for murdering the year-old son of his then-girlfriend. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented Velez in his appeal, said Velez was 1,000 miles away working construction in Tennessee when the child was injured. Velez's initial court-appointed attorneys failed to discover that evidence, and "after his conviction, Manuel received the death penalty, largely because a state prison expert presented false testimony to persuade the jury that Manuel would pose a danger to society if given life without parole instead," the ACLU said.
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Manuel Velez was convicted of murdering the year-old child of his girlfriend
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But the death sentence is overturned, and a new trial ordered
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A judge cites "ineffective assistance of counsel"
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"We should be ashamed of the errors that put Manuel on the brink of execution," ACLU says
Also, Velez' primary language is @placeholder, and he is a seventh-grade dropout, the ACLU said.