The Road Back for FBI Labs

The FBI crime labs are still an integral part of the American criminal justice system. The difference now is that defense attorneys have become as anxious as prosecutors to emphasize the labs’ work in their trials. That’s been the painful result of the disclosure last spring of the laboratory system’s apparently long and unnoticed decline.

Tuesday, for example, the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers launched another salvo about questionable practices in the FBI’s DNA analysis unit. Also, defense lawyers in the trials of Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski and Oklahoma City bombing suspect Terry L. Nichols will raise the specter of contaminated evidence and bad lab work.

And in a bombing trial of seven allegedly violent militia members in Seattle last April, the defense targeted the testimony of an FBI lab examiner. One serious charge was dropped and the jury deadlocked on the most important count: conspiracy to assault federal agents and destroy federal installations.

Given these facts, it’s ironic that the case involving the FBI’s most widely publicized blunder may well serve as the sign that its forensic work is improving. Remember the months of wasted investigative efforts directed at former security guard Richard Jewell in the still unsolved bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta last year? That case has been linked to two other Atlanta bombings early this year. And now federal authorities are asking for the public’s help on the basis of, finally, some hard evidence in the case: unusual components, packaging and manufacturing methods common to the bombs. A suspect or suspects might have been observed as the bomb parts were purchased or assembled. This shows solid lab and police work.

The administrator named to continue this rebound is Donald M. Kerr, a former director of the sprawling Los Alamos National Laboratory, who appears to be the right person to lead the FBI crime labs’ rehabilitation. Kerr’s management skill in overseeing a complex scientific enterprise with 10 times as many employees as the bureau’s labs will serve him well. But his lack of direct forensic experience should require him to have one or more deputies--preferably from outside the FBI ranks--with strong forensic training. That structure would afford Kerr a distilled view of the labs’ insular atmosphere.