A former Navy SEAL trainee convicted 12 years ago of abducting and killing a vacationing college student is making a last effort in court to clear his name.

Dustin Turner, 33, is hoping to get his conviction overturned on the strength of fellow SEAL trainee Billy Joe Brown’s post-trial admission that Brown was solely responsible for choking Jennifer Evans to death outside a Virginia Beach bar.

The Virginia Court of Appeals granted Turner a hearing in Virginia Beach Circuit Court to determine the credibility of Brown’s confession under a law allowing inmates to present newly discovered evidence of innocence. Brown is expected to testify at the hearing scheduled to begin Wednesday.

Once the circuit court judge rules on the issue of credibility, the case will return to the appeals court.

If the confession is found credible and the appeals court concludes the confession would have changed the outcome of the case, Turner would be freed, said David B. Hargett, Turner’s lawyer. Prosecutors could appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court.

“This is his only (remaining) legal remedy,” Hargett said Tuesday by phone from his Richmond office.

If Turner loses this round in court, he could try petitioning Gov. Timothy M. Kaine for clemency _ an option with little promise.

“If the legal proceeding doesn’t conclude with the declaration that Dusty is innocent, it’s hard to imagine why the governor’s office would disagree with that finding, unless there is something else going on,” Hargett said.

The previous governor, Mark R. Warner, denied a pardon request in 2005.

The Virginia attorney general’s office, which is handling the case, does not comment on pending litigation, spokesman J. Tucker Martin said Tuesday.

Evans, a 21-year-old Emory University student from Tucker, Ga., was vacationing when she disappeared from an oceanfront nightclub in June 1995.

Turner, of Bloomington, Ind., and Brown, of Dayton, Ohio, were stationed at the time at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base in Norfolk, training to become elite Navy commandos. Prosecutors theorized that the pair conspired to abduct Evans and that she died during a sexual assault.

Both initially denied any involvement in the slaying when questioned by police, then each blamed the other. Nine days after Evans disappeared, Turner led police to her body in a park 30 miles away in Newport News.

Turner and Brown were convicted in separate jury trials in 1996, with Turner testifying at his trial that he helped Brown dispose of the body but that he did not kill Evans.

Turner was sentenced to 82 years in prison for first-degree murder and abduction with intent to defile; Brown was sentenced to 72 years for conviction on the same charges plus attempted rape.

But in a sworn statement in 2003, Brown took full responsibility for the slaying, saying he had become a Christian and “can no longer allow someone who is innocent to continue to pay for what I did.”

At the time of the trials, Virginia imposed a 21-day limit on the introduction of new evidence after sentencing _ the strictest such limit in the country. As DNA science evolved, the legislature carved out an exception for biological evidence in 2001.

In 2004, the exception was widened to include non-biological evidence.

However, the law allowing prisoners to ask the appeals court for a “writ of actual innocence” sets a high standard. The new evidence must be so strong that the jury would not have found proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Asked whether this was Turner’s last chance to obtain freedom, Hargett said “most definitely. The law states you only have one shot at a petition for writ of actual innocence.”