a hearing in which some jurors were called to testify, Judge Mulkern ruled that the jury's deliberations were not tainted by racism. LaGuer exhausted his last appeal of that decision in 1994, more than ten years after his conviction. The case became well known among activists, academics, and journalists, who came to believe strongly that LaGuer had suffered a gross miscarriage of justice. Starting in 1986, reporters who looked at the case found troubling questions about whether LaGuer in fact committed the crime. Among those who took an interest in the case and who corresponded with LaGuer were Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, Pulitzer Prize winning author William Styron, Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, and WBUR radio personality Jose Masso, who created the Benjamin LaGuer papers collection at Northeastern University. During that time LaGuer also earned a bachelor's degree magna cum laude from Boston University and won a first place International PEN award for an essay on his mother. In 1998, LaGuer was for the first time eligible for parole but was denied because he refused to admit to the crime. At that point he attracted an unlikely ally in Boston University president and 1990 Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts, John Silber, who helped arrange for pro bono legal representation. His team, which included members of McDermott, Will & Emery, the law firm William Weld, Silber's opponent in the governor's race, had belonged to, successfully sued the parole board and forced a second hearing at which LaGuer was again denied parole. Response to a DNA test that backfired His legal team, led by law professor David Siegel, a founding member of the New England Innocence Project, then sought and found the physical evidence from the crime and in 1999 McDermott, Will & Emery managing partner Robert Cordy, now a member of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, wrote to the Worcester District Attorney in an attempt to establish a protocol for DNA testing. The district attorney, John Conte, a former State Senator appointed by Governor Michael Dukakis in 1976 to finish an unexpired term, rebuffed Cordy, in turn intimating that LaGuer's team may have tampered with the evidence. After more than two years of contentious and costly litigation a DNA test revealed a trace amount of LaGuer's genetic material in the evidence. Several forensic DNA experts, including Applied DNA Resources principal