At least 17 other people who have been convicted of serious crimes in New York City, and who maintain that they are innocent, have been unable to obtain DNA testing because the authorities say they cannot find the evidence, said Vanessa Potkin, a staff lawyer with the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan, a legal clinic that helps convicts get DNA tests.

"It has been much more difficult for us to locate forensic evidence in New York City than any other jurisdiction," Ms. Potkin said. "Mr. Newton could have been proven innocent in 1994."

How did Mr. Newton get convicted in the first place?

Mr. Newton, who had a criminal record from a fight as a teenager, was picked out of a photo array, then identified by the victim. Although she later said she was unsure if Mr. Newton was the assailant, the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on her testimony and a fleeting identification by the bodega clerk; Mr. Newton offered an alibi, saying he had spent the night at the home of a woman in Queens. No biological evidence was presented at the trial, and he was convicted in 1985.

Mr. Newton, who was a bank teller before his conviction, tried many times to get the authorities to find DNA in his case:

In 1994, Mr. Newton filed the first of his own motions to seek DNA testing of the rape kit, which contained swabs taken from the victim's genitals immediately after the attack. In 1994, 1997 and 1998 he lost those motions because the evidence was not available.

"Currently there is no original voucher in the active file, therefore it must have been destroyed," Police Sgt. Patrick J. McGuire wrote in 1998. As for any record of the destruction of the evidence, Sergeant McGuire wrote: "Unfortunately there was a fire in our facility during the summer of 1995 which destroyed these files."

Now that it's been found, where it was supposed to be, where the cops say they looked and didn't find, it, what is the repsonse:

"I can't explain why the evidence wasn't found before," [Prosecutor] Ms. Koenderman said. "It's tragic. I don't know what else to say. This man did not commit this crime and has languished in jail this many years."

Then there is the case of Jennifer Negron, murdered in 1992. Hours later, A witness told the police that she saw Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor drag Ms. Negron into a car. The witness was a drug addict who continued to use during the trial.

The case was investigated under the supervision of a detective in Brooklyn who was involved in three wrongful convictions and who said after he retired that the workload in his precinct was so high that he almost never had time to investigate serious crimes properly.

Both Mr. Wagstaffe and Mr. Connor denied being involved and took polygraph tests, which they passed but which are not admissible as evidence. They were convicted and sentenced to 12½ to 25 years.

The evidence in the case has yet to be found. Mr. Connor is now out of jail

Mr. Connor said that when he appeared before the parole board, he refused to budge on his assertion of innocence. On his release in 2004, he was forced to register as a sex offender. He discovered that meant he could not live in the new home he and his wife had bought because it was too close to a school, so he is renting an apartment separately nearby to comply with the terms of his parole.

Mr. Wastaffe won't go before the parole board. He would rather remain in jail searching for the evidence.

"I have refused to go to the parole board and will continue to refuse," Mr. Wagstaffe wrote in a recent letter. "Because I would rather die inside here fighting to prove my innocence than to live on the street like my co-defendant and carry the title of, and register as, a sadistic murderer and rapist."

How many more men are there like these, languishing in jail for a decade or more for crimes they didn't commit? As of today, 180 mostly New York inmates have been released through the Innocent Project's involvement and finding DNA evidence that proved them factually innocent of the crime. New York is only one state.

You can view the Innocence Project's chart on the causes of wrongful convictions here.