DNA tests help exonerate two inmates

Auburn, N.Y. — Two inmates - a convicted rapist in Georgia and a man who was unjustly convicted of murder in New York - have been freed after DNA tests proved their innocence.

Innocence Project co-director Peter Neufeld said he had never seen a case like that of Roy Brown, whose 1992 murder conviction was thrown out by a judge.

"Armed only with a notebook, stamps and a copy of the state's Freedom of Information Law, Roy Brown identified the true perpetrator from a prison cell," said Nina Morrison, an attorney at the Innocence Project.

Frail from severe liver disease, Brown said bitterly at a news conference after his release Tuesday: "This was an abortion, an abortion of justice. They could have saved me all this hell."

Brown, 46, was convicted of stabbing and strangling Sabina Kulakowski. He was found guilty mostly on the strength of bite marks on her nude body that a prosecution witness linked to Brown.

Brown filed a Freedom of Information request four years ago and paid $28.50 for copies of all the documents in his case. He found four affidavits relating to Barry Bench, the brother of Kulakowski's ex-boyfriend.

Neither Brown nor his lawyers had previously seen the affidavits, which convinced Brown that Bench was the killer. Brown sent a letter from prison to Bench in 2003, accusing him of the murder. Several days later, Bench committed suicide by stepping in front of a train.

Cayuga County District Attorney James Vargason ordered Bench's body exhumed to extract DNA, and said new tests showed that Bench's DNA was on the red T-shirt investigators believe Kulakowski was wearing the night she was killed in 1991.

In Georgia, Willie "Pete" Williams, 44, became a free man Tuesday night after spending nearly nearly half his life in prison for rape.

Williams was convicted in a 1985 attack on a woman at an apartment complex parking lot. The woman identified him as her attacker, but DNA tests on genetic material from a rape kit examination cleared Williams.

"We are convinced today Mr. Williams was not responsible for this," Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said.

Williams and Brown become the 193rd and 194th convicts nationwide exonerated through DNA testing, according to the Innocence Project.