AKRON, Ohio -- A man changed his plea to guilty on Monday in the rape and murder of a Barberton woman, a crime for which an innocent man spent seven years in prison.

Earl Mann, 35, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder, attempted murder and rape charges.

He is accused of killing Judith Johnson and raping and beating her 6-year-old granddaughter in 1998.

Those are the crimes that Johnson's son-in-law, Clarence Elkins, was originally convicted of in 1999.

He was released from prison in 2005 after DNA evidence cleared him and pointed to Mann. Elkins obtained the evidence himself by snatching a cigarette butt from Mann while they were inmates together at the Mansfield Correctional Institution.

Elkins received $1 million from the state in a wrongful incarceration settlement.

Mann was sentenced to 55 years to life in prison with the first possibility of parole when he is 91 years old. The deal spared him a possible death sentence if he had been convicted by a jury.

Elkins said Monday that after Mann's plea, he finally feels that his name has been cleared and that justice has been served.