On May 3, 1986, two University of Chicago students were walking to their dormitories when they were approached from behind by three males. The men pushed the two women to their knees, demanding money and claiming to have a gun. Only one of the victims had money, six dollars, which she handed over. The assailants then told the victims to stand up and walk straight ahead. After a time they were instructed to crawl and then to walk again until they came to an empty garbage lot. There, one woman was sexually assaulted three times by one man and once by another. She scratched one of the assailants on the face and neck. The other woman was held by the third man and escaped being raped after a violent struggle. Three days after the incident police stopped Reynolds on the street because he fit the general description the victims had given campus security the night of the attack. He also had scratches on his face which appeared to be consistent with one victim's testimony that she had scratched one of the assailants.

When the police stopped Reynolds on the street, they brought him over to the victims, who were sitting in a nearby squad car. Both victims positively identified Reynolds in this show-up procedure. A co-defendant, Billy Wardell, was arrested separately and positively identified a month later. Reynolds maintained that the scratches on his face were from an argument with his girlfriend.

Wardell and Reynolds were charged with criminal sexual assault and armed robbery. The state's evidence against the men consisted of the victim's identification of Wardell and incorrect serological testimony connecting Reynolds to the crime. Pamela Fish, a forensic analyst, testified that blood group testing on semen from the crime could not exclude Reynolds and that 43% of the population shared his blood type. The victim also had blood group markers consistent with the crime scene sample, and the analyst failed to explain that her blood type could have "masked" the perpetrator's. When the evidence being tested is a mixed stain of semen from the perpetrator and vaginal secretions from the victim – and testing does not detect blood group substances or enzymes foreign to the victim – no potential semen donor can be excluded.

The two men were convicted and sentenced to 55 years in prison.

Fish's notes from the tests were found years later, saying that the blood types that she testified were consistent did not in fact match up. Another issue was that potentially exculpatory evidence, a June 1986 report on hair and fiber evidence, was never turned over to the defense. DNA testing was repeatedly requested (since the original trial) and finally granted in 1997.

In 1997, DNA testing on the semen proved Reynolds' innocence. His conviction was vacated and the prosecution dropped the charges against him. Reynolds had been incarcerated for a total of eleven years.