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... Looking around, he discovered the naked body of a bartender, Kim Ancona, sprawled on the floor of the men's restroom. She had been stabbed 11 times. ... Suspicion soon focused on Ray Krone, a 35-year-old mailman with no criminal record who knew the victim and had been a regular customer at the bar. ... At his 1992 trial, Krone maintained his innocence, arguing that he was home sleeping at the time of the murder. But an expert witness for the prosecution testified that the bite marks found on Ancona's body matched the Styrofoam impression made by Krone's teeth. Krone was convicted and sentenced to death. ... It wasn't until 2002, after Krone had spent more than 10 years behind bars, that DNA testing, which by then had become routine in criminal cases, was conducted on saliva found on the victim's tank top. Not only did the results exonerate Krone, but they also implicated another Arizona prison inmate serving time for attempted child molestation. ... DNA profiling has demonstrated how to conduct a scientifically respectable forensic identification, says Michael J. Saks, a professor at the College of Law at Arizona State University. It also is a dramatic reminder, he says, that many of those wrongful convictions were based on other types of forensic evidence.
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