The Iowa Supreme Court has tossed out a murder conviction and ordered a new trial for a man accused of the gruesome 2017 stabbing death of his girlfriend. The state’s high court in a split decision Friday ordered a new trial for 30-year-old Gregory Michael Davis. The court found his trial attorney’s failure to object to confusing jury instructions cost Davis a fair trial.

Davis was convicted in 2018 of first-degree murder and other counts in the September 2017 death of 29-year-old Carrie Davis, whose body was found rolled in a blanket inside a trailer in Marion. She had been stabbed 26 times.