Crime Labs Stained by a Shadow of Doubt

A series of scandals, probes and new questions about old convictions are casting doubt on one of the foundations of the modern criminal justice system -- the crime lab.

Over the last year, laboratories at the FBI and in several states have come under scrutiny, including criminal investigations, findings of mismanagement and accusations of falsifying evidence. So far, however, only a few convictions have been overturned.

Lab directors defend their work and standards. But critics say the problems show the need for independent oversight and for labs to be separated from the criminal justice departments where most are based.

“When people are dealing with someone’s life, they need to be more careful, be more sincere,” said Carol Batie of Houston, whose son, Josiah Sutton, was convicted of rape, largely on DNA evidence.

A new analysis of that same evidence has now excluded Sutton. He got a second chance after problems at the Houston Police Department lab sent evidence in hundreds of cases back for retests. Sutton was released on bond, and the district attorney has recommended a pardon.

Sutton said in March: “I was guilty until proven innocent.”

It’s essential that the labs’ work can be trusted, agree critics and the forensic scientists who run tests on DNA, blood, fingerprints, clothing and more. Still, problems keep cropping up:

* In Phoenix, lab technicians mistakenly overstated the likelihood that DNA linked suspects to crimes in nine criminal cases, including a homicide that brought a conviction and two other investigations in which suspects pleaded guilty.

* In Florida, a state crime lab worker in Orlando falsified DNA data.

* In Kansas, mislabeling of a blood sample 12 years ago let a man go free. He now has been charged in a string of rapes and a 2002 murder.

* In Oklahoma, Montana and West Virginia, new findings have called old testimony into question.

* In Houston, an audit of the DNA section in the police lab found undertrained staff, a leaky roof that may have contaminated evidence and possible mishandling of evidence.

“Labs are run by human beings,” said James Alan Fox, a criminal justice professor at Northeastern University. “Essentially, the management of labs may not be as foolproof as the science of forensics.”

Better standards, better funding, better management -- all may be necessary to ensure that lab results don’t wrongly convince juries of guilt, Fox said.

“They operate like the wild West,” said Peter Neufeld, a defense attorney and a founder of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, a group behind many of the DNA-based exonerations in recent years.

Neufeld runs down a list of problems: Standards are voluntary and set up by crime lab directors themselves, too few labs follow the standards, and the overwhelming majority of labs are too closely connected to police departments or prosecutors.

“For too long, it’s been run by people who are in law enforcement, as opposed to people who are scientists,” he said.

Law enforcement officials and lab directors said the individual problems in recent months are taken very seriously. But sweeping criticisms are misguided, they said.

“There are always bad actors in any profession,” said Paul Ferrara, director of the Virginia Division of Forensic Science. “The difference is that our mistakes do not get buried.”

Noted Ken Melson, U.S. attorney in east Virginia: “No one wants a Houston in their state.”

The best corrective, Melson, Ferrara and others said, is for every lab to be accredited under a system set up by crime lab directors so that their practices are inspected and evaluated by independent inspectors.

But few states require accreditation, and meeting those standards can be costly. Of 455 larger crime labs nationwide, 225 are accredited, said Ralph Keaton, executive director of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors, Laboratory Accreditation Board.

New York was alone in mandating accreditation until last year, when Oklahoma required it. Texas lawmakers just agreed to the same.

Accreditation can cost a few thousand dollars for small one- or two-person operations, and as much as $70,000 for larger multi-laboratory operations. That doesn’t include significant costs for new training and equipment to meet the standards.

Lab directors dismiss the idea that their independence could be compromised by financial or supervisory links to police or prosecutors. Instead, some questioned their critics’ agenda.

“The defense community would like to discredit laboratories wherever they can,” Ferrara said. “Part of what we’re seeing is a conscious effort to try to shake the public’s confidence in forensic technology.

“I’ve been in this business 32 years. The quality and accuracy and reliability and objectivity of forensic science is better today than it ever has been,” he said.

But critics say more troubling doubts rattle the whole criminal justice system as more problems are uncovered.

“Let me tell you, it even is putting doubts in jurors’ minds in cases where there shouldn’t be much doubt,” said defense lawyer Bob Wicoff, who handled Josiah Sutton’s case. “It undercuts everyone’s faith in the system.”

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Crime Lab Problems

Some problems with forensic evidence in labs throughout the country in the last year:

* In Orlando, Fla., an analyst with the state’s Department of Law Enforcement admitted falsifying results of a test designed to check his work and his lab’s ability to analyze DNA. The state said his transgression did not affect any criminal cases, and it would pay for retests where he was the lead analyst.

* In Phoenix, technicians inflated the likelihood that a suspect’s genetic material was present by using the wrong statistical computation in nine criminal cases. One case, a homicide, resulted in a jury conviction; in two others, defendants pleaded guilty. Police said none of the cases hinged on DNA tests.

* In Houston, more than 300 cases have been identified for retesting after an audit found significant problems in the DNA section of the Police Department’s crime lab, with mishandling of evidence and possible evidence contamination.

* In Fort Worth, Texas, a senior forensic scientist was fired and police crime lab operations were suspended after a review of cases by outside DNA experts. Nearly 100 cases are slated for review.

* In Kansas, mislabeling of a blood sample 12 years ago freed a man who has now been charged in a string of subsequent rapes and a 2002 murder. The director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation apologized and said new safeguards were planned, although he maintained that there is no widespread problem with lab evidence.

* In Montana and West Virginia, the testimony of former lab directors or top experts has been questioned. Former Montana state crime lab director Arnold Melnikoff’s testimony is under review. Fred Zain, a former West Virginia serology director, was facing fraud charges over his testimony when he died last year.

* At the FBI, the inspector general, an independent Justice Department watchdog, is investigating practices at the FBI lab unit that analyzes DNA. A lab technician recently resigned while under investigation for failing to follow required scientific procedures in analyzing DNA samples, and a second lab employee was indicted over alleged false testimony.

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Source: Associated Press

Los Angeles Times