Court overturns rape conviction

RENO -- A federal appeals court has overturned the child rape conviction of a Carlin man, saying DNA testimony from a Washoe County forensic scientist was misleading.

The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave prosecutors six months to retry Troy Don Brown or release him after 14 years in prison.

Brown, 36, was accused of raping a 9-year-old the girl at her trailer in 1994 while her mother was at a tavern.

An Elko County jury found Brown guilty of two counts of sexual assault, for which he received two consecutive life sentences.

At the trial, Renee Romero, a DNA expert and head of the Washoe County crime lab, testified that Brown's DNA matched the DNA found in the victim's underwear, and that "1 in 3 million people randomly selected from the population would also match" that DNA, according to court documents.

After the prosecutor pressed her to put this another way, Romero testified that the chance of the DNA being from Brown was "99.99967 percent."

The appeals panel, in its 2-1 ruling issued Monday, said Romero's testimony on the nearly 100 percent likelihood it was Brown created a "fallacy" that misled the jury.

"In fact, the former testimony (1 in 3 million) is the probability of a match between an innocent person selected randomly from the population; this is not the same as the probability that Troy's DNA was the same as the DNA found in (her ) underwear, which would prove his guilt," the judges said.