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OY BROWN THOUGHT THE POLICE WERE JUST CHECKING up on him when an officer knocked on his door one day in May 1991. Brown, a Self-professed hard drinker who earned a living selling magazine subscriptions, had only a week before been released after serving an 8-month prison term. HíS crime: threatening to kill the director of the Cayuga County Department of Social Services in upstate New York. A caseworker had deemed Brown unfit to care for his 7-year-old daughter. Furious, Brown made a series of threatening phone calls to the director. But he had served his time. What could the officer want from him now?

DRIVING QUESTIONS

  1. What is the structure of DNA, and how is DNA organized in cells?
  2. How is DNA copied in living cells, and how can DNA be amplified for forensics?
  3. How does DNA profiling make use of genetic variation in DNA sequences?
  4. How does DNA evidence fit into forensic investigations?

Three days earlier, police had found the battered body of a woman lying in the grass about 300 feet from the farmhouse where she had lived. Someone had burned the place to the ground. The body was identified as that of Sabina Kulakowski, a social worker at the Cayuga County Department of Social Services. The crime was horrific. The murderer had beaten the 49-year-old Kulakowski, bitten her several times, dragged her outside, and then stabbed and strangled her. It was obvious that Kulakowski had struggled; her body was covered with defensive wounds.

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In 1991, Roy Brown was found guilty of homicide and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Although Kulakowski had not been involved in Brown’s case, officers arrested Brown that day on suspicion of murder. Eight months later, a jury found Brown guilty of homicide and sentenced him to prison for 25 years to life. The prosecution argued that Brown’s motive was revenge against the Department of Social Services. But what really nailed the case was testimony from an expert who stated that bite marks on the victim’s body matched Brown’s teeth.

Brown, however, maintained his innocence. “I never knew Ms. Kulakowski, and I had nothing to do with that woman’s death…I am truly innocent,” he told the court and onlookers after the verdict had been announced.

Even from prison Brown never stopped trying to prove his innocence. He repeatedly petitioned, in vain, for a retrial.

Then something unexpected happened: Brown uncovered additional evidence that strongly suggested he was not the perpetrator. The evidence was so compelling, in fact, that in late 2004, after Brown had spent 12 years in prison, his lawyers decided to contact the Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization founded in 1992. Its mission: to use DNA evidence to free people wrongly convicted of crimes.