A Murder Conviction Torn Apart by a Bullet

Kulbicki's wife's support and the suspicions about the science lured Drouet to take the case as part of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender Innocence Project, which files post-conviction appeals. Before becoming a public defender, Drouet, 47, served as a lawyer at the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General, where she oversaw an investigation of false testimony by one of the FBI lab's bullet-lead experts.

Soon her penchant for pursuing scientific cheating would shake up the Kulbicki case. Drouet uncovered evidence that Maryland State Police firearms expert Joseph Kopera -- the prosecution witness who had linked the off-duty revolver to the murder -- had padded his resume and lied on the witness stand about his credentials.

Kopera testified at the 1995 trial that he had an engineering degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Maryland. Drouet contacted both schools, whose registrars said that Kopera never attended their programs. A University of Maryland transcript that Kopera had submitted after he was questioned to substantiate his credentials was deemed a forgery by the school's registrar, court records show.

Confronted with the evidence, Kopera, 61, abruptly retired Feb. 28 and committed suicide a day later. His three decades of work in scores of other cases statewide is now under scrutiny by the state police.

Prosecutors conceded to the court that "Kopera misspoke regarding certain degrees he claimed to have obtained," but they argued that it was not grounds for reversing Kulbicki's conviction. "Kopera did not perjure himself at the trial, because testimony concerning his degrees was not material," they told the judge.

Drouet's sleuthing did not stop there.

She insisted on obtaining Kopera's lab notes that documented his initial examinations of Kulbicki's gun. The formal firearms reports were turned over to the defense, but the notes he used in producing those reports were not given to the defense at either trial, Drouet alleged.

The notes conflicted with nearly every major assertion that Kopera had made at trial, a review by The Washington Post found.

Prosecutors told jurors that Kulbicki killed Nueslein in his pickup truck, putting his off-duty gun to her head and firing a single shot. Part of the bullet stayed in her brain. Another fragment passed through her skull and struck the passenger-side door, leaving an indentation. That fragment landed in the back seat of the truck, prosecutors said.

Kopera had testified that the bullet fragment recovered from the victim's head and the one found in Kulbicki's truck were of a "large" caliber, at least a .38 or .40. That would make them consistent with bullets fired from Kulbicki's .38-caliber revolver.

But Kopera's examination notes told a different story. For the bullet fragment recovered from the victim's brain, Kopera declared the caliber "medium." For a second fragment recovered in the truck, he put a slash mark in the caliber field of his notes to indicate that it could not be determined.

Kopera also testified that Kulbicki's weapon was in a "cleaned condition," allowing prosecutors to suggest to jurors that the defendant had sanitized the weapon to remove any blood or gunpowder residue and to hide the fact that it had been recently fired. "It's obvious that he cleaned the gun, because there was no evidence of recently, recent firing," a prosecutor told the jury. "Well, of course not. I am -- anyone would know that if you're going to keep the gun, you should clean the gun. And he cleaned the gun."