A Prison Letter from Ben LaGuer                  I still replay that day in my life. For twenty-one years, I’ve been trying to get back to that midsummer morning in 1983 when, barely home from the US Army two weeks, I was charged with raping a white woman.  I proclaimed my innocence with an alibi, no history of crime and a fine upbringing for character reference.  But an interracial rape had dusted up hatred in a small New England town.  While the woman had a history of domestic abuse and schizophrenia dating back to the 1950’s, the town police knew how to charge an Afro-Puerto Rican suspect with raping a white woman.  And prosecutors and courts, for their part, have known how to defend the verdict for two decades.        Three days of testimony and three hours of jury debate was enough for twelve angry white men to find me guilty and for the judge to put me away for life.       Over the years, the jury’s verdict has been upheld at every appellate turn. But I have never given up hope. Massachusetts law is rife with court rulings in which new trials were denied to defendants later proven innocent; Santo Rodriguez, Bobby Joe Leaster, Neil Miller, Marvin Mitchell, Kenneth Waters, Donnell Johnson, Joseph Salvatti, Peter Limone, Angel Hernandez, William Leyden, Marlon Passley, Anthony Powell, Rodriguez Charles, Christopher Harding, Dennis Maher, Shawn Drumgold, Stephan Cowen, Louis Santos, Eric Sarsfield, Lawrence Adams and Angel Toro. In many cases the proof was not more than a few steps or pages away.       Individuals ranging from Boston University President Emeritus John Silber, MIT linguist Noam Chomsky, as well as novelists William Styron, Alex Theroux and Leslie Epstein, poets Rosanna Warren and Martin Espada, former US Civil Rights Chief Deval Patrick, Harvard Professors Charles Ogletree and Henry Louis Gates, as well as Don Muhammad, Jose Masso, Abbe Smith, John Lozada and Boston City Councilmen Felix Arroyo and Chuck Turner, have risked both reputations and a small fortune to bring power to truth in this case.        James C. Rehnquist is leading a new team of lawyers on a quest for a new trial to show the very best evidence of how far prosecutors and their agents went to assure and maintain a guilty verdict. (A series of fingerprints found on the base of the telephone used to bind the victim were kept secret for 18 years.)      In March 2002, I was left in flames and holding a bag of dirty DNA. If I had been scheduled to die under a death penalty law, I would have simply run out of time—beat by a technology still not fully understood. To update, a group of DNA experts have already noted serious flaws in the analysis.  And this led six members of the legislature, in 2003, led by Representatives Ellen Story and Byron Rushing to co-sign a letter of inquiries to the State Police Crime Lab. (State Police officials have adopted a policy of silence.) In July 2004 Massachusetts Senator Jarrett Barrios, chairman of the Public Safety Committee, intervenes with a letter to the crime lab director.  In August Senator Dianne Wilkerson joins her colleague and the six State Representatives in requesting action “without further delay.” District Attorney John Conte has yet to turn over vital chain of custody papers.      The idea of DNA infallibility is a fallacy of media and legal advocacy in courts.      In 2003, an FBI Crime Lab analyst resigned after failing to follow DNA testing protocol in 103 cases.  A second analyst resigned after 100 more DNA samples were called into question.  In 2003, Josiah Sutton was released from a Texas prison because a DNA test used to convict him was later discovered faulty.  In 2000, the Philadelphia Crime Lab reported that among other errors, a series of reference samples were mislabeled for actual crime scene evidence.  In 1996, Timothy Durham was freed from an Oklahoma prison because a state DNA lab analyst had failed to completely separate the male from the female DNA at a vital stage in the analysis.  So the victim’s DNA, when combined with the true rapist, produced a genotype that falsely incriminated Durham.  In 1995, a DNA analyst mistakenly reported that John Kocak’s DNA matched a rape kit sample.  After other errors were found, the lab retested all samples and then reported a match to the victim’s own DNA.  Kocak was freed.  In 1992 a DNA led to the release of Kerry Kotler.  Kotler was later arrested for a similar rape.  At his second trial, the same DNA expert (Dr. Ed Blake) who had cleared Kotler of his first rape case then testified that cops had framed Kotler by stealing his DNA.  The jury disagreed.  (In order for DNA analysis to have real value as evidence prosecutors, lawyers and judges must be vigilant for mishaps in the collection, handling and even in DNA typing of samples.)       District Attorney John Conte has told the public half-truths and outright lies about me. Court rulings are riddled with errors due to his submissions.      What Mr. Conte has paid in reputation and public treasury is far too high for his office to admit even the slightest flaw in the verdict.      The State Parole Board has rebuffed three (3) requests to release me on parole, despite my exemplary record because I have refused to admit guilt. When I next appear before the parole board, in 2008, I would already have spent twenty-three (23) more years in prison than if I had accepted Mr. Conte's terms to plead guilty in 1983. The price for wanting to fight for my biography and honor of my father's name has cost me an awesome toll. While I may never walk again a free man for this stance, I will likely do so without a tinge of regret. I'd rather die in prison fighting for my life than falsely admit guilt.      BenLaGuer.com aims to offer the very latest developments, including court filing and forensic opinions, as well as the latest updates. This case remains one of enormous legal, scientific and political consequence.   Benjamin LaGuer Norfolk State Penitentiary