A woman who spent more than 35 years in prison for a 1976 Reno murder she did not commit, has filed a wrongful conviction lawsuit against the state, and could get up to $3.5 million under a new Nevada law. The lawsuit, in Washoe District Court, asks for a certificate of innocence for Cathy Woods , and compensation for her time is prison. The case will test Nevada’s new wrongful conviction compensation law. Woods was arrested in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1979 in connection with the murder of 19-year-old Michelle Mitchell in Reno in 1976. But in 2014, a judge threw out Woods’ conviction after DNA evidence retrieved from a cigarette butt found at the scene of the killing near UNR, led investigators to Rodney Halbower.