Scott Hornoff hunched forward in the hard wooden chair at the defense table, trying to escape the stiffness in his back as the jury shuffled out of the courtroom to begin their deliberations.

He looked down at his wrist and studied the thin copper MIA bracelet that he wore. It bore the name of Charles F. Wallace, a flier from Mississippi shot down over North Vietnam and listed as "killed in action, body not recovered."

He had never really understood why it had meant so much to him. He had picked it up almost as a whim in Orlando, Florida, a few years earlier. It was just a trinket, something he had wanted since he saw his sister-in-law wearing one in the 1970s. But for some reason, at this moment, as the jury was preparing to decide his fate, the bracelet had taken on an almost mystical significance.

Hornoff was still studying the bracelet when his brother, Dave Hornoff, came over and sat beside him. Maybe Dave wanted to offer a few words of encouragement, but Hornoff didn't really give him the chance.

"I want you to hold on to this for me for a while," Hornoff said as he handed his brother the bracelet.

"Why?" Dave Hornoff asked.

Hornoff didn't answer.

He didn't have the words to explain that he was all but certain that the jury was going to convict him of murder. He didn't know how to tell his brother that to him the bracelet was a kind of a talisman and that as long as Dave Hornoff kept it, Hornoff would know that someone in the real world outside prison would remember him. That, he thought, would help him keep his hope alive that someday he would be vindicated. Hornoff didn't have the words to explain the whirl of emotions and thoughts that were ricocheting around his brain. And so Scott Hornoff said nothing.

It didn't take long for the jury to reach its verdict.

The state had presented a compelling case. And the jury unanimously convicted him of the brutal murder of Vicky Cushman.

He was sentenced to life in prison.

Prison life is hard. It's supposed to be. Society demands that criminals pay their debt and that debt is paid with loneliness and boredom; long hours of interminable boredom leavened only by a shadowy fear that hovers above you day and night. There's the fear of the other inmates, fear of the guards and, above all, fear that the crushing monotony of prison life will squeeze the soul out of you.

But prison life was even harder for a convicted cop like Scott Hornoff.

He was kept in a remote corner of the Rhode Island Adult State Correctional Institute, prevented from mingling with the general population who might seek a chance to punish Scott Hornoff, not for the murder but for the crime of having been a cop.

On his isolated cellblock were other police officers convicted of crimes. There were prison guards who had gone bad, and there were others: "child molesters, guys who were affiliated with the mafia and had turned informantat one point, we even got a couple of teenagers from the Asian Boys, a notorious street gang in Rhode Island. In fact, some of them, I had put in there myself or I had assisted in putting them in there."

To survive, Scott Hornoff, the detective, learned not to ask too many questions. "One thing that I tried not to do was to find out any details of their cases," he told Crime Library. "Especially the ones who were convicted of child molesting. It made it a lot easier to get through the day, you know, to be around them."

As isolated as he was, he was not entirely alone. He still had his wife and children. In fact, soon after he was imprisoned, his wife gave birth to their third son, and the dream that someday he would be reunited with his family helped sustain him.

That might have surprised some of the people who had read accounts that Hornoff had handed Rhonda his wedding band before he entered the prison. "Everyone thought that it was symbolic of me freeing her," Hornoff said. The truth was, he gave her the ring because it had a diamond chip in it, and gemstones are prohibited behind bars in Rhode Island.

In fact, Hornoff believed with all of his heart that he would someday be free, that he would reclaim the MIA bracelet from his brother and the wedding ring from his wife.

Nor was he alone in that conviction. Chase, his attorney, remained steadfast in his belief in Hornoff's innocence. So did the National Police Defense Foundation, a nonprofit group that works to protect police officers accused wrongfully of crimes or misconduct. They had dispatched a polygraph expert and a private investigator and like Chase, they too became convinced that Hornoff was innocent.

And so did the New England branch of the Innocence Project, an organization which over the past several years has worked to free more than 120 people from prisons across the country where they were serving time for crimes they did not commit, in many cases using DNA evidence to overturn their convictions.

The Hornoff case was a particular challenge for the NEIP, an organization that often represents poor clients convicted as the result of some kind of prejudice or a rush to judgment. In this case, the defendant was a man who appeared to have had all the advantages.

"Scott's case was different because, of course, he was a police officer at the time he was first investigated. He had the benefit of counsel. He retained private counsel. The investigation lasted some four or five yearsit was not your typical case of a rush to judgmentor [a case in which] the individual had everything lined up against him to result in a wrongful conviction."

Still, despite the support Hornoff was receiving, there was little support for him in the halls of power. Hornoff's supporters, most notably Joe Occhapinto, president of the National Police Defense Foundation speculate that perhaps investigators were unwilling to admit that perhaps they had made a mistake.

"Ithink a lot of it had to do with politics and the notoriety on a small-town police department." Occapinto said. "Guys' careers are on the line and if they made a mistake, thencareer enhancement is down the drainbut, hey it happens.".

But prosecutors and state police investigators remained firmly convinced that their case had been solid. All the facts that they had collected had pointed to Hornoff's guilt. There was, in their minds, no reason to reconsider.

In 1999, Superior Court Associate Justice Robert Krause agreed, refusing to grant Hornoff a new trial.

In the months before Krause issued his ruling, Hornoff's strength and his hope both faltered. Hornoff summoned his then-wife for a quiet and painful conversation.

"I told her that I thought it might be a good idea if we got divorced so she couldtry to find some happiness. I still believed I was going to be free, I just didn't know how long it was going to take."

She agreed, and that year, the couple divorced.