In November 1997, Mark Reid was convicted of sexual assault in the first degree and kidnaping in the first degree. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. He served six of those 12 years before DNA testing in 2003 proved his innocence.

In November 1996, the victim was walking home from a bar when the attacker emerged from a path, grabbed her, put a sharp object against her side, and forced her down the path into a park. The attacker repeatedly put his hands around the woman's neck and threatened to kill her as she wrestled with him. When on top of her, he began choking her until she was losing consciousness. At that point, in fear of her life, she stopped struggling. The assailant forced her to perform oral sex and raped her after putting on a condom.

The victim described her attacker as a stocky, light skinned black male, about 5' 7", with freckles across his nose and under his eyes. Four days after the attack, she was shown a photo lineup of eight pictures and, shaking and crying, identified Reid as her attacker. She testified that there was no doubt he was the attacker from features around the eyes and bridge of the nose despite, no sign of freckles in the picture and Reid's height of 6'. There were also differences in her description of the attacker immediately after the crime and her testimony at trial.

Reid became the prime suspect because an officer who was familiar with him thought he matched the description. In addition to the victim's description and identification, prosecutors relied on hair analysis to convict Reid.

Foreign pubic hairs were recovered from the victim and analyzed by Kiti Settachatgul, the lead criminalist in the trace evidence section of the state forensic science laboratory. Settachatgul testified that he recovered three pubic hairs that did not belong to the victim, were of Negroid origin, and were similar to those of Reid with a reasonable degree of scientific certainty - though he stated that he could not prove they were identical.

Settachatgul's conclusions about the hairs were erroneous, and not for the first time in his history of hair analysis. DNA testing not only excluded Reid as the contributor, but the hairs were determined to have come from a Caucasian.