ROANOKE, Va. – Lawyers for a man once accused of slashing to death two lesbian hikers eight years ago in Shenandoah National Park asked a federal judge Thursday to bar prosecutors from trying to charge him again.

Darrell David Rice “is innocent, and he’s entitled to the same closure as the families of the victims,” Richmond attorney Gerald Zerkin said. “Nobody’s going to receive that closure if people still believe Darrell had something to do with it.”

Earlier this month, the government sought to withdraw capital murder charges against Rice, 36, saying new evidence cast doubt on the case.

However, prosecutors asked U.S. District Judge Norman Moon to drop the charges “without prejudice,” which would allow them to indict Rice again.

Zerkin’s 15-page response filed in Charlottesville federal court argued that Rice should be left alone altogether. After a 61/2-year investigation, he said, the government’s case against Rice was flawed with factual errors that were twisted in hopes of securing a conviction.

Investigators, for example, have testified that the campsite where 24-year-old Julianne Williams of St. Cloud, Minn., and 26-year-old Laura “Lollie” Winans of Unity, Maine, were found in 1996 yielded no useful forensic information.

However, subsequent analysis of numerous pieces of evidence, including hair on gloves and under duct tape used to bind Williams’ wrists, did not match Rice.

Rice also didn’t match DNA found on ligatures used on both women, and a cigarette butt at the scene contained male DNA that didn’t belong to him, defense lawyers said.

“To believe, in the face of this evidence, that Rice committed the crime, would require one to believe him to be virtually magical,” defense lawyers wrote. “That he could not only methodically subjugate and kill both women without leaving behind any forensic evidence of his own, but also leave behind the hairs, bodily fluids and perhaps fingerprints of others.”

The government also submitted flawed transcripts in which Rice inaccurately appeared to say he hated gays, and they manipulated their best guess for the hikers’ time of death based on when Rice was in or near the park, Zerkin said.

“They took circumstances and arranged them in the worst possible light for Rice,” Zerkin said. “Some of them were enormous stretches, and they created this illusion of a case.”

Zerkin said prosecutors also have ignored a park ranger and former lead investigator who announced in 1997 he might have been involved in the murder. The ranger later denied any involvement on a polygraph test and failed. Six months later, Zerkin said, the ranger interrogated Rice on the murders.

Despite other suspects, Zerkin said, authorities continued to focus on Rice. To bolster their case, they turned to jailhouse snitches who claimed Rice confessed to killing the women.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant did not immediately return phone calls to his office and cell phone.

Rice, of Columbia, Md., remains in the Charlottesville-Albemarle Regional Jail with about 21/2 years left on an 11-year sentence for the attempted abduction of another woman in the park.

Even after the government moved to dismiss the case, Rice still doesn’t believe he’s free from the investigation, Zerkin said.

“To have this hanging on, to be put back in prison with the same people who told stories on him … it’s a horrible thing to do,” he said.