Roy Brown Murder Essay

Roy Brown 1992 Murder & Exoneration Case

The United States currently has the most incarcerated people in the world. Most do not know that there are more than two million people currently incarcerated in U.S. prisons. It is estimated that around 2.3% - 5 % of those prisoners are actually innocent. If the number was just one percent, that would mean that 20,000 people currently imprisoned are innocent (Ferner). Roy Arthur Brown, a father of three and guitar teacher from New York, was one of those 20,000+ people that were falsely imprisoned. Brown was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated in 1992 for a murder he did not commit. Then after critical defense evidence was found, he was able to set himself free and start a new life.

On May 23, 1991,

The clothes nearby were found saturated with blood ("DESCRIPTION"). Roy Brown was an immediate suspect due to him being released from jail less than a week before the murder for making multiple phone calls threatening the social services agency where the victim worked. Although the calls were never targeted to the victim directly ("Roy Brown"). There was also an affidavit written by Donna Merithew two years after the murder. She stated that she saw Brown nearby the crime scene the day of the murder. Brown spent eight months in jail for making the threating phone calls, and after his release, a man whom he was incarcerated with testified that Brown allegedly called him and told him that he committed the murder ("Roy Brown"). Brown testified in court that he did not have any relation with the victim, and he did not even know who she was. Brown was arrested three days after the murder on May 26, 1991 and then was summoned to court on January 2, 1992 where he was convicted for murdering Sabina Kulakowski (Santos). The trials defense was Roy Brown and his lawyer Katy Karlovitz against the state of New York. The prosecutions main evidence against Brown were

While in prison, he requested copies of his case under the “Freedom of Information Act” due to the original copies he had were destroyed in a fire at his stepfather’s house. While examining the documents, he found multiple critical points of information that the defense never received. One of those documents he found referenced a man named Barry Bench, another suspect in the case. The documents stated that Barry bench was “acting oddly” around the time of the murder. A close family friend that lived with Bench at the time stated that he left the bar drunk and took an hour to get home; the bar was only a half a mile from his home (Santos). Bench was also angry because the farmhouse that was burned down was owned by the Bench family ("Roy Brown"). Barry Bench’s brother had also been in a relationship with Sabina Kulakowski for seventeen years until they separated two months before she was murdered (Santos). In 2003, Brown wrote a letter to Bench talking about the new information he found and is going to get Bench taken to court with the newly found evidence to get Bench imprisoned and set himself free. After five days when the letter was sent, Bench committed suicide by jumping in front of a train (Santos). The Innocence Project became involved in the appeal case in 2005 and requested salvia DNA testing. In 2006, the DNA testing showed no correlation to Brown. Benches daughter