Brown's father and sister say investigators came six nights after Lynch's murder to question Brown and search his house. They assert that the investigators then took him to the white house where Lynch's blood still splattered the floor.

"He told me they picked up a stick and tried to get him to hold it," Cash says. ...

In interviews, the two detectives who investigated the case for the sheriff's department said they couldn't remember whether they did that or not.

The stick was used to beat Lynch to death. A palm print on the stick did not match Brown’s. More sophisticated testing could reveal whether Brown’s DNA is on the stick, but the stick can’t be tested because the police lost or destroyed it.

Without the stick or other samples to test for the murderer's genetic fingerprint, Brown is unable to defend himself, bearing the burden of a system that allows authorities to lose and even trash biological evidence. He is one of 141 inmates The Denver Post has found nationwide whose cases have been derailed because their evidence was lost, mishandled or destroyed.

Brown isn’t competent to stand trial, so he’s been confined in a mental institution for the last 14 years. Brown spent the time taking classes that required him to memorize basic facts about the criminal justice system, and was briefly declared competent in 1993. As his defense lawyers began preparing a defense, they discovered that the murder weapon, and most other physical evidence, was missing. Tests on Brown’s clothes revealed no blood. None of the fingerprints taken from the crime scene matched Brown’s.

The police detectives who obtained Brown’s confession are less than credible. Both were convicted of racketeering in 1998.

Former Anson County Detective Roland "Bud" Hutchinson denies having worked on the Lynch case even though sheriff's department records, court testimony and colleagues say he was the lead investigator. ... Asked three times whether he destroyed [the stick], Hutchinson answers, "I don't know."

"If I did, I wouldn't say," he continues. "It's not your business what happened to that evidence. It's nobody's business what happened to that evidence."

Here’s the kicker:

As [Assistant Capital Defender Mike Klinkosum] tells it, District Attorney Michael Parker's office last summer offered to credit Brown for time served. Brown could have walked free if he agreed to a voluntary-manslaughter conviction without having to admit guilt, he says. Though the deal was tempting, Klinkosum says Brown didn't take it because Brown couldn't weigh its pros and cons.

Parker told the court weeks later that Brown was "too dangerous to be on the streets."

Parker didn’t seem concerned about Brown’s “danger” when he offered a “time served” disposition. But Brown, unable to understand the offer, was again declared incompetent. He remains in confinement, and may never regain his freedom, thanks to the missing evidence. His problems have been compouned by a judge who concluded that the loss of the evidence did not show “bad faith” on the part of the police, even though the detectives made no effort to find it or to investigate the reasons for its disappearance. The same judge thought it “speculative” that the conveniently missing evidence would prove Brown’s innocence.

Brown wants his story told. It needs to be heard. It’s time to give this man’s life back to him.

Note: Floyd Brown's story is part of a larger series of investigative reporting into the plague of lost or destroyed evidence in criminal cases, collectively titled "Trashing the Truth," by reporters at the Denver Post. Accompanying video and links to all the stories can be found here.