AUBURN - Roy Brown has filed a $5 million claim against the state after spending 15 years in prison for a murder he has officially and finally been cleared of.

Roy Brown, 46, was freed from state prison in January and his murder conviction was vacated after Cayuga County Surrogate Judge Mark Fandrich decided new evidence would not lead to Brown's conviction during a new trial.

In a claim filed Wednesday, lawyers said "Mr. Brown's wrongful arrest, conviction and incarceration were not caused by Mr. Brown, but rather were an outrageous and tragic consequence of ineptitude and misconduct by those sworn to uphold the law."

Brown's attorney, Katy Karlovitz, said Brown's claim was filed with the state attorney general's office. The state has 40 days to respond.

The complaint will be heard in the state Court of Claims, which handles civil litigation seeking damages from the state or state-related agencies.

Karlovitz said Brown could have filed a federal civil rights complaint that might yield more compensation than the state claim, but that is a longer process and Brown's ill health -- he is waiting for a liver transplant because of advanced cirrhosis of the liver -- was a consideration.

Brown was convicted in 1992 of stabbing and strangling Sabina Kulakowski, a county social worker. He was found guilty mostly on the strength of bite marks on her nude body that a prosecution witness linked to Brown, even though they showed indentations from six upper teeth while Brown had only four.

Dr. Lowell Levine, a forensic dentist who works with the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center and was initially consulted in 1991, found earlier this year that based upon wax examples he took of models taken of Brown's dentition in 1991, that Brown could not have made the bitemarks.

Brown became a suspect in Kulakowski's murder because of the bitemark evidence, evidence that Brown had threatened the lives of county workers more than once over his children's custody, that he had violently bitten women he was involved with and that he was released from Cayuga County Jail May 17, 1991, days before Kulakowski was killed.

In prison, Brown uncovered statements sheriff's deputies obtained during their original investigation of the 1991 murder. Those statements, which defense lawyers said were never turned over by the prosecution, raised suspicions about Barry Bench, the brother of Kulakowski's estranged boyfriend, Ronald.

Brown sent a letter from prison to Bench in 2003, accusing him of the murder. Bench committed suicide by stepping in front of an Amtrack train.

Authorities exhumed Bench's remains in December, and more sensitive DNA testing found the profile of Barry Bench on a red shirt reading "Bonjour y'all New Orleans." The shirt was found 150 feet from Kulakowski's body and that Kulakowski is believed to have worn the night of her killing.

For the complete story, read Friday's edition of The Citizen.