With all of America's advancements in science and technology, our legal system should be adept at finding the truth in most of today's murder cases. On Jan. 23, Roy Brown was released from prison after serving 15 years on a murder conviction. DNA tests showed that Barry Bench, a volunteer firefighter, was actually responsible for the murder of Sabina Kulakowski, who was found bitten, stabbed, beaten and strangled on May 23, 1991. Although our legal system prevailed in the end, an innocent man spent 15 years of his life in prison for a crime he did not commit.
Ultimately, Mr. Brown had to break the case from his prison cell since he did not have enough money to pay for a lawyer and further investigation. In his case, it seems that corruption within the legal system played a big role in his false conviction. During the initial trial, forensic experts claimed that the bite marks on Ms. Kulakowski were most likely not from Brown because they indicated a full, straight row of upper teeth, while Mr. Brown was missing two teeth from his upper jaw. Because bite marks are particularly tricky in murder cases, a district attorney overlooked this evidence.
Moreover, during the initial case, investigator Peter J. Pickney was confronted with suspicions of Mr. Bench's involvement. Mr. Pickney chose to ignore these reservations because he was a friend of Mr. Bench's and did not believe that Mr. Bench could murder someone. Later, Mr. Pickney pled guilty in a case accusing him of stealing from a drug investigation fund.
When Mr. Brown first took it upon himself to solve his own case, he wrote to Mr. Bench accusing him of the murder and telling him he would find DNA evidence to convict him. Mr. Bench committed suicide five days later.
Although his daughter, Katherine Eckstadt, stepped up and gave a sample of her DNA to compare to that on the victim's shirt, Mr. Vargason, a prosecutor for the case in 1992, claimed that a paternity test proving that Ms. Eckstadt was Mr. Bench's daughter was necessary to establish anything.
Years later, in 2004, the Innocence Project took Brown's case after he lost in a motion to overturn his conviction, in which he was forced to represent himself. DNA tests were conducted on the saliva stains found on the victim's shirt, and all stains tested proved that Mr. Brown was not the perpetrator. The evidence that Ms. Eckstadt provided showed that her DNA matched that of the saliva on the victim, but it was not until Mr. Bench's body was exhumed and tested for DNA that Mr. Brown was considered innocent.
In our highly advanced country, it is absolutely ridiculous that any innocent man should be forced to spend 15 years of his life in jail. Everyone has the right to a fair trial, and it does not seem like Mr. Brown's trial was fair due to the lack of real investigation conducted to help free him at the time of the murder.
In the end, this case was solved fairly easily, but the cost that an innocent man had to pay for the skepticism of certain individuals and slow pace of the court proceedings is unacceptable. Mr. Brown is the eighth person in only 13 months in the state of New York to be exonerated through DNA testing. Our legal system must scrutinize past inaccurate convictions to learn how to solve the problem of innocent individuals suffering unjustly.
Gabbie Wade ([email protected]) is a freshman intending to major in journalism.
