Roy Brown - Perjury / Withheld Evidence
Brown, Roy; murder; NRE: perjury/false accusation, false/misleading forensic evidence, withheld exculpatory evidence, misconduct that is not withholding evidence
[600:593]; 4th Dept. 7/16/93; affirmed
"The evidence, viewed in the light most favorable to the [prosecution]...is sufficient to support the conviction and the verdict is not against the weight of the evidence..."
N4 [93] "In 1992, [Brown] was convicted of murder based upon, among other things, bite marks found on the victim's body and testimony by [Brown's] wife and ex-wife of [his] propensity to bite when angry. Failure by prosecutors to disclose potentially exculpatory opinion of forensic odontologist. More sophisticated DNA testing was unavailable at the time of trial. [Prosecution's] consumption of saliva specimens may have lessened availability of samples for further post-conviction testing by the defense."
from NRE synopsis (by the Innocence Project):
"By using Freedom of Information laws to request copies of his own court documents, Roy Brown solved his own case. DNA testing compared the suspected true perpetrator to DNA from a bitemark found on the victim and confirmed the truth of his suspicion."
"On May 23, 1991, 49-year-old Sabina Kulakowski, a social service worker, was found beaten and strangled and stabbed to death near the upstate...farmhouse where she lived. Kulakowski had been bitten numerous times all over her body. At the scene, police collected a bloody nightshirt and swabbed the bitemarks for saliva. Kulakowski's farmhouse had also been set on fire.
"In 1995, Brown sought testing on the bite mark swabs, but they had been consumed during previous testing. Brown was also told that the saliva from the nightshirt had been consumed.*
[* That was false. (See below.)]
"Brown then took it upon himself to find Kulakowski's true killer. After a fire destroyed all of his court documents at his step-father's house, he asked for copies of his documents under the Freedom of Information Act. He found documents that had not been disclosed to the defense implicating another man, Barry Bench. Bench had acted oddly around the time of the murder and was upset at Kulakowski because the farmouse that she lived in belonged to the Bench family. (She had dated Bench's brother up until two months before the murder.) In 2003, Brown wrote to Bench, telling him that DNA would implicate him when Brown finally got testing. Five days after the letter was mailed, Bench committed suicide by stepping in front of an Amtrak train.
"In 2005, the Innocence Project took on Brown's case and discovered that there were six more saliva stains on the nightshirt that could be tested. In 2006, DNA testing proved that the saliva on the shirt did not match Brown. After this exclusion, the Innocence Project located Barry Bench's daughter, who gave a sample of her DNA. Half of her DNA matched the saliva on the shirt: precisely what would be expected from a daughter.
"Brown was released from prison on January 23, 2007. The prosecution dismissed the charges on March 5, 2007. He received $2.6 million in compensation from the New York Court of Claims.
"In July 2019, Brown died. He was 58."
[All emphases added unless otherwise noted.]
