A New York man who was sentenced to life in prison for an arson murder was freed on Friday after 24 years behind bars, according to an AP report.

The judge who set the man free ruled that the conviction against 79-year-old Han Tak Lee had been based on arson science that no longer holds up.

Following the ruling, prosecutors have 120 days to decide if they will retry Lee for the 1989 death of his 20-year-old, mentally handicapped daughter Ji Yun Lee, and they said they likely will seek another trial.

The prosecution said that the arson evidence should be thrown out, but there is other evidence that shows Lee's guilt in his daughter's death, which happened in a fire at a religious retreat in the Pocono Mountains.

Lee has always maintained that the fire was an accident, but investigators in the late 1980s said the evidence from the fire was indicative of arson, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune. At the time, investigators were taught that unusually hot and intense fires involved the use of an accelerant, which would indicate arson.

Research in the intervening years has disproven this and many other theories about arson, which has resulted in many people like Lee being freed from prison.

"Much of what was presented to Lee's jury as science is now conceded to be little more than superstition," a magistrate wrote in the review of the case.

Lee, who is a U.S. citizen from South Korea, said he will remain in the U.S. and will now live in a retirement community in Queens, N.Y., while the prosecution makes a decision on how to proceed. Lee lived and worked in Queens before he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

"He doesn't hold this against the United States of America," said Peter Goldberger, Lee's long-time attorney. "He's an American. He said this is his home."