Compounding the tragedy of the 1991 rape and murder of Dana Ireland, two brothers spent decades in prison for a criminal conviction that, this year, was overturned.

It’s been a long and complex investigation, but after a petition by Albert Ian Schweitzer in January 2023, both he and his brother Shawn Schweitzer were found through new DNA evidence to be excluded as culprits in the crimes.

It was the second time physical evidence had been found wanting. The brothers had been excluded, with charges dropped, in 1998 but were reindicted the next year based on testimony, and were incarcerated in 2000. A third defendant, Frank Pauline, also was convicted but was killed in prison before their convictions were overturned.

After a series of missteps, it is not surprising the Schweitzers are now pursuing compensation, a process that also has proved messy. Finally, on Thursday, came some good news. The Hawaii Supreme Court issued a ruling that simplified that process, in this case and in any other conviction reversals that will arise in the future. It is a needed injection of clarity that, for the Schweitzers, should enable at least a partial restoration of justice.

The brothers are seeking through civil court compensation of $50,000 for each year of their wrongful imprisonments, but almost immediately after being exonerated, ran into headwinds.

Anne Lopez, state attorney general, wrote to them in February and said they would first need to secure a finding in criminal court of “actual innocence” before their compensation cases could proceed.

So the Schweitzers moved to secure that finding of innocence in the criminal court. This led to a subpoena of investigation materials from the Hawaii County Police Department and prosecutor’s office — which in recent months came to include a major new suspect in Ireland’s tragic death: Albert Lauro Jr., identified via modern-day DNA techniques. But police officials, who did not want their investigation interrupted by the release of documents, sought to block the subpoena by petitioning the state’s high court.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court justices ruled that the Circuit Court must transfer the case to a civil court that could make the innocence finding and allow the civil court judge to decide on release of the police materials.

“Confronted by a complex and baffling legal landscape, the parties and the court inadvertently made significant procedural missteps,” wrote Associate Justice Todd Eddins on behalf of all five justices of the court.

“We correct those missteps. We reorient the proceedings and set the Schweitzers on a more straightforward path to the discovery they seek. And the compensation they feel is deserved.”

This was clearly the right thing to do, given the likelihood that improvements in DNA technology will compel future criminal reversals in other cases.

In the Ireland case, new analysis of DNA evidence led Big Island police to find a match in Lauro — but he committed suicide on July 23, just days after being questioned then inexplicably released by police. This is why police opposed the subpoena, a complication that had been sure to delay the compensation.

That delay, as it turned out, would only prolong the inevitable, at the expense of some much-needed closure.

The brutal slaying of Ireland at age 23 was a horrible case that has haunted Hawaii ever since. Further, the errors in the prosecution had been consequential. The Schweitzer brothers lost years of their freedom. Pauline might be alive had he not been imprisoned.

The advent of DNA analysis propels the drive to free people wrongly convicted. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, 575 people have been exonerated based on DNA testing.

Given the improvements in technology, there will be more such cases. The criminal justice system is a human endeavor with inevitable flaws, but it is heartening to see the court’s willingness to provide clear guidance to acknowledge and correct them.