ST. LOUIS – A former Southern Illinois University student convicted in 2011 of attempting to threaten a murderous rampage has been released from prison, days after an appeals court overturned the aspiring rapper's conviction and the ensuing five-year sentence.

Olutosin Oduwole, 27, was released Monday from a state lockup in Jacksonville. Last week, Illinois' 5th District Appellate Court tossed out his conviction, ruling that prosecutors failed to prove he ever actively tried to convey a threat.

During his trial in Madison County, Ill., prosecutors argued that on a piece of paper found in 2007 in Oduwole's car, which was found abandoned on the university's Edwardsville campus just northeast of St. Louis, he had written that he would go on a murderous rampage if he wasn't paid $50,000, and that this amounted to a threat.