Today's addition to the list of wrongly convicted prisoners is Marlon Pendleton, who served 12 years for a rape he didn't commit. Judge Stanley Sacks in Cook County, Illinois ordered Pendleton's release yesterday.

The conviction could have been avoided if the government's scientist had done her job. (It may be, of course, that she saw her job as supporting the arrest rather than discovering the truth.)

The judge's ruling follows an announcement last week that DNA tests ruled out Pendleton as the source of genetic evidence left by the person who attacked and robbed a woman on Chicago's South Side in 1992.

Pendleton had claimed from the outset that he was innocent of the attack. He was convicted after Chicago police crime lab analyst Pamela Fish, whose work has been linked to several wrongful convictions, said there was not enough evidence for DNA testing.

But a forensic serologist chosen to analyze evidence by prosecutors and Pendleton's attorneys found that, even after the crime analyst used some of the evidence in her testing, he still had enough material to develop a profile.