By Adam Liptak, NY Times National Report, Tuesday, October 1, 2002

This article reports the news of a Montana man¡¯s release from prison, after serving 15 years of a 40 year sentence for raping an eight year old girl. Jimmy Ray Bromgard was wrongly convicted based on the testimony of the manager of the state¡¯s crime laboratory, who assigned a quantitative value to the possibility that hairs found at the scene belonged to the defendant, when such quantitative measurement had not been scientifically established. The victim was not able to say with any certainty that Mr. Bromgard was the man who raped her, and there was no other evidence to link him to the crime.

The laboratory manager, Arnold Melnikoff, testified that the hair found at the scene was indistinguishable from the defendant¡¯s sample hair, and the possibility of that occurring was 1 in 10,000. Mr. Melnikoff has acknowledged that there has never been a thorough study that would allow the

AP report, NY Times National Report, Tuesday, October 1, 2002

This short article reports on a man who fled the United States in 1981, just before his trial for first degree murder of his girlfriend was to begin. Ira S. Einhorn was convicted in absentia, after his girlfriend¡¯s body was found stuffed into a steamer trunk in their apartment two years after she disappeared and was apparently killed. Mr. Einhorn was captured in France in 1997, but France refused to extradite him to the United States until prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty. Mr. Einhorn¡¯s original conviction was vacated, and a new trial began on September 30, 2002.

Mr. Bromgard was sent to prison at age 18, and spent his entire adult life behind bars, for a crime he did not commit. This article raises several important issues, such as the role expert witnesses play at trial, the need for adequate representation to challenge expert testimony, and the inherent bias in the system that allows an innocent man to be convicted based on flimsy evide

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